Terms and Conditions
by Nashidesei
Summary: Seto is a Vampire Hunter that rescues a young girl who turns out to be a Vampire herself. In this lifethreatening situation, Seto is forced to choose between life as Shizuka’s contracted servant or death. Will he make the right choice? [Discontinued]
1. The Hunt

**Disclaimer: **I do not own _Yu-Gi-Oh_. I do not Own Kaiba Seto, Kaiba Mokuba, Rashid, Isis, Kawai Shizuka (Serenity Wheeler in the dub), Arken (Yami Bakura-dub ), Ryou, Valon, Rafael, Mazaki Anzu (Tea Somethingorother-dub), Jounouchi Katsuya (Joey Wheeler-dub), the Pharaoh Atem, Mutou Yugi, or _anyone_ _else_ featured in this fanfic. No, not even Ryuzaki, (Rex Raptor-dub. Probably my least favorite Americanised name of the lot.) Bummer. Anyway, what it all boils down to is this: I own nothing of this story except the story itself, and it's kind of messed up anyway. Enjoy. 

**Setting:** Alternate Universe, Future. Post World War III Japan.

**Summary:** Kaiba Seto is a Vampire Hunter who has been searching for his kidnapped brother for almost six years. He rescues a young girl, Jounochi Shizuka, who turns out to be a Vampire; in this life-threatening situation, Seto is forced to choose between life as Shizuka's contracted servant or death and failure in finding his long-lost brother. Will he make the right choice, if there's a right choice at all? Seto x Shizuka

* * *

**Terms and Conditions** **Chapter One: The Hunt**

"_Big Brother! Big Brother, help!"_

_The boy is screaming, his pleas choked by sobs and he frustrated grunts of his struggle. He tries with all the strength his immature body can muster to pull free of the thick dark-skinned arms that hold him. The man to whom those strong arms belong is wearing a black cloak, loose and flowing in cut, with the hood pulled up to conceal his features. Even the deepest shadows that hood casts, however, could never hope to hide the glowing violet of his eyes._

_There are two others in the midst of this mess of overturned tables and demolished bookcases; a cerulean-eyes youth and a woman clad in black clothing identical to her cohort. The woman's slim fingers, a shade paler than the man's, are clenched tightly about the youth's pale wrists from behind, keeping him on his knees in spite of his valiant struggle._

"_Let him go!" the youth shouts. "If you need someone then take me instead!"_

"_I am afraid you are not what we seek," the man replies. His voice is deep and weathered, accented in a way neither captive has ever heard before._

_The younger of the two narrows his own blue eyes—darker than his brothers, like the night sky—and stomps on one of his captor's feet, causing the man to loosen his grip for a fraction of a second. The boy stumbles forward. "Big Br—" A dark hand is clamped over the child's mouth, effectively silencing him. The man wraps his other arm around the boy's arms and waist, lifting him easily off the ground._

_The older boy grits his teeth, angry tears forming in his sapphire eyes. "For Gods, sake—he's just a child!"_

"_Worry not, boy," the man says in his strange, tired voice. "We have no intention of hurting your brother."_

_The lithe woman releases the youth's wrists and he immediately shoots to his feet, almost equal height with the woman in spite of his youth. "Then wh—"_

_His furious demand is interrupted when his own aggressor wraps one arm around his chest, under his own arms, and pulls him back against her. With the other hand she seals his mouth, digging sharp fingernails into his skin and forcing his head to turn, to face her over his shoulder. "Neither, however, do we intend to do anything for the sake of your **God**."_

_Her voice is a silky hiss, bearing the same odd accent as her cohort; even this close the youth can not see her features clearly, but he does see the light from the lamp overturned just in front of him play off inhumanly sharp canines. He gasps through her fingers as he realizes what his captor is._

"_Now, now, little one," she whispers, "it will all be over soon. Hush."_

_The older boy clenches his eyes shut, tears at last spilling over. He gives a choked sob and makes one last futile attempt to pull free. The woman continues to murmur into his ear, holding him ever closer, as though consoling a hurt toddler._

"_I give you my word that no harm will befall your brother so long as he is in my care," the man says. The boy in question is still now, limp as a rag doll in his aggressor's arms; his night-colored eyes are closed and his skin pale, beneath the man's dark fingers his lips are most certainly tinged ever so slightly blue. Any more air than that which hisses in between the man's fingers would be enough to wake the boy._

"_We simply need to check something," the woman continues in a whisper, cold breath running tendrils through the youth's chestnut hair. Her fingers slide from her captive's lips, trailing down to brush over his neck. "If we are incorrect the child will be returned to you unharmed."_

_The older boy's eyes widen as the unspoken other half of that promise sinks in. "A-And if you're right?" His voice is a ragged whisper, broken. "Then what?"_

_The woman loosens her hold on the youth's chest, slender fingers trailing over the worn white cotton of his t-shirt. "If we are correct…"_

"_Then we are sorry," the man completes. His eyes lock with his companion's and the woman tightens her hold on the sapphire-eyed youth's neck for a mere instant. It is enough. "Infinitely sorry."_

_The youth's vision darkens, and he crumples to the floor._

* * *

Kaiba Seto awoke with a start, sapphire eyes wide and deep with pain. He took a shaky breath, holding a hand to his brow to wipe away the perspiration as his heavy breathing calmed. 

When his lungs had settled and his heartbeat slowed sufficiently, the young man brought up his legs and circled them with his arms, leaning his forehead on his knees. The cloth of his sheet was cool and soothing, and he let out a long sigh of relief. "It was just a dream," he assured himself. "Just another dream. That's all."

Seto pulled back and looked up at the dark sky above him, still littered with strokes of crimson and violet reminding of a recent sunset. The stars were beginning to show, and though the man knew they wouldn't be as numerous or as clear here as they had at his last site—the city nearby was too big—the glimmer of their heavenly light calmed him nonetheless.

"Just a dream," he murmured, laying back down on his bedroll.

But it wasn't a dream, not really. The details had been etched into the elder Kaiba's memory for nearly six years, record of a deed that could not and would not go unpunished. Six years ago Mokuba had been taken, and Seto hadn't found a trace of him since. No rumors, no sightings, nothing. As though he had never existed at all.

To be fair, as far as governmental records went it was quite possible there was no such person as Kaiba Mokuba; _they_ ran the government these days, after all. It had been ten years since they stole it, giving them plenty of time to rewrite the world.

The Third World War had rocked the planet to its foundations, shaken every man, woman and child until all they had known to be true was forgotten, disproved and rejected. Fantasy became reality and the life mankind had known became a thing of the past. Countries attacked each other at random in their terror, all rulers certain that this country—_this_ country!—was the main base for what they considered their enemy.

In the end, though, _they_ came forward and a treaty was signed that gave them the world humans had almost destroyed in their fear of these mythic, soulless monsters. So now congressional meetings were held at night, schools were open twenty-four hours a day to accommodate the youth of the breed, and getting assigned graveyard duty became desirable.

Some said these night folk were the saviors of the world, that they had helped to avoid the nuclear war everyone had though was inevitable, but Seto knew better. These people, these things, were monsters—every bit as evil as the old stories said. They had stolen a little boy for no reason except their own apparent curiosity, and that little boy's brother was going to make sure they paid for whatever cruel fate they had forced on him.

They all deserved to die for what they had done, every last one of these monsters—these _Vampires_.

Seto rose from his mat, rolling it up with his foot, and reached up to make sure his earring was still in place. The chill cross of gold cooled is fingertips—mate to the crucifix around his neck—and the young man let out a sigh of relief. This near to the city he had half-expected the be robbed of these meager defenses while he slept through the day—defenses that proved every bit as useful as the old stories said.

He smirked. The problem over in the United States regarding prayer in school had been quickly resolved upon the Vampires' rise to power. Surprisingly, though, the Vampire Lord Darts had allowed parochial schools to remains open, with the condition that any religious trappings were limited to the inside of the building. The same rules were applied to churches and private homes, though they were lifted around Christmas and Easter to allow for the popular light displays Americans so enjoyed.

The young man had been shocked to find a light-up plastic cross in the yard neighboring one of his targets on his last foray to the western world, and the image had stuck with him ever since. Most lesser Vampires couldn't handle even the sight of a cross, of that much he was certain, and yet the Vampire Lord ruling the United States had allowed for a human to erect such a monument in spite of the fact that he—or she, Seto had never met the homeowner—was neighbor to one of the Lord's own kind. It had almost been enough to shake the youth's conviction.

_Almost, but not quite,_ he reminded himself, straightening the gold cross around his neck. After all, he had ended up using that cross to finally banish the monster, and by that point the time to hesitate was most certainly through.

Seto picked up his black trenchcoat and pulled it one over his white turtleneck and blue vest, checking the holster at his side and those at his wrists to make sure all were loaded and sufficiently hidden. Wooden stakes nestled at the base of either hand, under the loose sleeves, a .45 semiautomatic pistol rested at his hip, magazine loaded with silver bullets, and a small bottle—normally used to hold some intoxicating beverage—housing consecrated oil was strapped securely to the small of his back.

He looked about his camp: He could come back for the blankets later, and the only other possession he owned rested safely beneath his shirt, silver metal brushing the bare skin of his chest when he breathed. He reached up to touch the locket through the fabric of his shirt, closing his eyes and lowering his head as though in prayer.

"Wish me luck, Little Brother," he whispered. Seto opened his sapphire eyes and headed toward the edge of the woods. The little remaining splashes of color had faded from the sky at last, announcing it was time for the young man to begin his foray into the city.

Kaiba Seto joined the hunt once again.

* * *

"Mistress, if you would just let _one_ of us—" 

The auburn-haired young woman shook her head determinedly, looking herself over in the mirror. "No, Ryou," she commanded, straightening one pleat of her blue skirt. "I can't have a dozen bodyguards with me whenever I go outside—it draws a lot more attention than anyone wants to have."

"But, Shizuka-_dono_, even one would be better than this," the white-haired young man asserted. His brow creased and he took a step forward, at last passing over the threshold into the woman's room. "It's dangerous, no matter how much you change your clothes."

"He's right, Princess," came a voice from the hallway. Both Shizuka and her companion, Ryou, turned as another snowy-haired young man strode into the room. He could almost have been Ryou's twin if not for the color of his eyes—blue instead of brown—and the considerably darker manner with which he held himself. He turned his sharp eyes on the young woman and cocked his head to one side. "I'm supposed to protect you, aren't I? How can I do that if you won't let me go with you?"

Shizuka sighed and shook her head. "Listen, I'm just going to deliver a message. If the Vampire Lord ruling over Japan should notice that you and I seem to be together extremely often, and then suddenly I start walking around with one of the other guards it will attract his attention." She cast her amber eyes over her shoulder to view the plain white envelope sitting on her bed. On its face, written in English, were a title and a name, with subtext translating them into Japanese. "Lady Cecilia needs to know about this latest development right away, and if we all start wandering around so soon after it happened the Vampire Lord _will_ notice."

Ryou, as much as he hated to admit it, knew she was right. He let out a sigh and lowered his brown eyes, staring at the floor for a long moment before taking a step closer and straightening out the young woman's blue-and-black striped armbands. "Be careful, Mistress," he warned. "I have a very bad feeling about tonight. If something happens—"

"If something happens," she interjected, "then it was meant to happen. Things happen as they're supposed to, Ryou." She hooked her fingers under the young man's chin and tilted his head up to face her. Though several inches taller than his Mistress, the white-haired young man was quite adept at avoiding eye contact. This time, however, he didn't. "I'll be careful, I promise."

She threw her arms around his neck and embraced him tightly; he held her as though he were never going to see her again. In turn she repeated the hug with the other man in the room, who held her exactly as his near-lookalike had. Shizuka backed away from them until she reached to door to her bedroom, and there she hesitated. "I-I'll be back before you know it," she promised. With that, she spun on her heel and bolted down the hall.

Ryou came forward to stand even with the other man in the room. "Do you think she'll be safe, Arken?" He turned his compassionate eyes on his cold companion, and the only reply he received was a shrug. Ryou sighed and looked at the door again, but said nothing more.

A long moment passed in silence. "We'd better tell her brother," Arken said softly, striding to the door. "He'll have kittens if he finds out from someone other than us." And so the two young men vacated the room as well, leaving their Mistress' bedchamber emptier than it had felt in years.

* * *

Shizuka raced down the street, booted feet making heavy sounds with each step. This part of town was usually fairly busy at night, so she found herself a little wary to head through its stillness; this was the only way to reach the messenger, though, and she needed this message delivered immediately. The Vampire Lord ruling Japan had never taken a servant before, not under a contract, and the fact that he had chosen a human barely into his twenties was even stranger than his taking a contracted servant in the first place. 

It just didn't make sense—there was no reason for him to take a contract with anyone, much less a mortal. To have one so young so close to his person could only spell danger for the ruling Vampire. Shizuka knew that something was wrong, and hoped that her contact overseas could figure out what.

She reached the end of the street and turned to the left, reaching down to pull up her high stockings, matching in color and design to her armbands. Normally she wouldn't have been caught dead in something like this, but she was trying to stay inconspicuous. If she was lucky, then any wanderers under his Lordship's command would mistake her for a mortal and leave her be—even though the blood ban on Japanese humans was swiftly being overruled.

At the end of the next street she came to a wall, smooth and pure black in color, as though recently painted. She looked up the street in either direction before leaning in and placing one pale hand against its surface. "Rafael," she whispered. "Rafael, it's me."

The wall seemed suddenly to lose its solidity and the young woman fell through. She let out a short cry and stumbled dangerously, but found herself steadied by a pair of strong arms, one of which circled her waist while the other took hold of her free hand. Standing straight once more, Shizuka turned to see a tall, muscular young man with hair of pale blond. He smiled down at her and she let out a sigh of relief.

"So, what'll it be today, missy?" He spoke in English, and it took the woman a moment to lapse into her own broken dialect of the foreign language.

Shizuka straightened up as the man turned to walk away, giving the young woman time to look around the room she had stumbled into. It was dark, with nothing more than pale blue panel lights along the walls to illuminate its space. There were round tables placed intermittently throughout the room, curved chairs and thick couches pressed against the far wall. Rafael was making his way toward the bar just in front of her, which was a light in itself, glowing the same pale blue as select panels of the wall.

He turned to glance back at her, still waiting for her reply, and she shook her head. "Nothing today, Rafael," she said, holding up the envelope. "I have a message for Lady Cecilia, express delivery."

The man turned around, reached out and took the envelope, scrutinizing it carefully for several seconds before nodding once in silence and holding it up in the air. "Valon!" he hollered.

Shizuka found herself forced momentarily backward as a rush of air shot by her, throwing her off-balance. When she looked up to see what had just happened, she found a young brunette man with blue eyes floating in the air just beside her letter. He cocked his head to one side and reached out to take it, hesitating a mere instant before his tanned fingers brushed the paper.

"This is for the Lady in Europe, right?" he inquired, voice thick with an Australian accent. That was odd, Shizuka realized, considering the treaty between human and Vampires had been expressly specific that one continent remain free of the night folk; the one chosen had been Australia, a place the Vampires had never really wanted to visit anyway. There was just too much sun. So how was this young Vampire from that continent?

"Hey, Missy," the young man repeated, "Europe, right?"

Shizuka started, realizing she had yet to reply, and nodded hurriedly. She had delivered plenty of messages before, but this was the first time she had actually been present to see the messenger that delivered them. Usually Valon was in another country, another division of his service, and so it would take another day before he could fly back. "L-Lady Cecilia and Lord Pegasus," she clarified. "It would be best if they had it by tomorrow."

The young man crossed his legs indian-style, still hovering, and flipped over as though affixed to a single point in the open air, placing his face just in front of hers. "You're a slave driver, y'know that? It takes almost six hours to get t'Europe from here, and that's when I'm at full strength. Your bloody resistance movement's been taking a serious toll on my abilities."

She pursed her lips. "It's not _my_ movement, Valon," she reminded him.

"I know, but if it were I'd be a lot more anxious to join it for real," he smirked, displaying his perfect white teeth, complete with the inhumanly sharp canines of his people. He flipped back over, letting his legs straighten out beneath him but never touching the ground, and turned to face one of the wide black windows toward the ceiling. "I'll have it to her by noon here, a' right? As long as I can keep pace with the sunrise that's the best I can do, assuming I don't get shot down by the European military again."

Rafael looked up at his comrade with a blank stare. "You know that was an accident. Pegasus apologized."

"Maybe so, but it still hurt like hell." With that Valon turned about, snatching the letter from the blond's outstretched hand, kicked off of nothing at all and became a blur of color that shot out the window.

Shizuka stared up with wide amber eyes, unsure whether to be astonished or bewildered. She heard Rafael chuckle and turned to face him again. "He's a bit hyperactive, right?" he grinned. "Ah, he's a good kid. Confused, but good." He turned around to walk toward the bar. "Are you sure you don't want anything? I give discounts to resistance members."

The young woman smiled and shook her head. "Thank you, Rafael, but no. I promised Arken and Ryou I'd be back as soon as I could." Rafael stepped behind the bar and shrugged noncommittally, waving a hand in both dismissal and farewell. Shizuka waved in return and then spun around to head back out the now-visible door.

He spoke again when she placed her hand on the cool blue metal of the knob, making her freeze in place. "Watch out, Missy," he warned. "There've been sightings lately, grungies all over the place. You should've brought a bodyguard tonight."

"I'm sure I'll be fine," she replied with a smile.

"I sure hope you will."

Her smile faltered at that—she had never seen Rafael in such a dark mood before. She brushed off the feeling of foreboding that had settled over her and opened the door, rushing out into the cool night air.

* * *

Seto had been wandering for nearly three hours and had yet to get a hit when he saw her. A young girl, barely over sixteen, dressed in the clothes of a rebellious teenager, rushing along just across the street from him. He looked her up and down, easily keeping pace with her girlish sprint, and wondered idly what a human was doing out so late. 

There was nothing about her to indicate that she might have been a Vampire—her skin, while pale, didn't bear the bluish tint he had come to associate with the night folk, her eyes didn't seem to give off any glow, and her hair was a fairly normal shade of auburn. The way she moved was different, too; were she a Vampire he would not have been able to keep up with her run. The monsters were just too fast.

If he had not been watching her in curiosity it was unlikely that he would have noticed the slightly deeper patch of shadow in the alley she raced by, or caught the familiar scent of old blood in the air. Indeed, he might have continued on without ever witnessing the events that followed his notice, and thus singlehandedly changed history.

But he was watching, and he did notice, and he did witness the events that transpired after. For better or worse, he became another note in the song of inevitability, and the world would never forget.

The woman cried out as arms shot out of the darkness and circled her neck, jerking her back into the shadowed alley. Obviously on cue, a dozen or so other shadows detached themselves from the eaves overhead and dropped to the ground, lumbering into the alley as well. Seto ground his teeth, narrowed his eyes, and drew his gun from its holster as he ran across the road. He reached the alley just in time to see the entire procession carry the young woman around a corner. They held her up over their heads like some sort of concert group gone wrong, and though she struggled she clearly could not break free.

Seto swore internally as he fired off a shot; judging by the yelp that reached his hearing he had hit one of them, probably in the foot. "Damn, damn, damn!" he raced on in pursuit. The alley corner opened up to another street, this one considerably worse for the wear. No streetlights lit this road, the sidewalk was cracked and uneven, a parking meter lay on its side in a pile of leaves and debris. It was a dead street.

The girl and her captors were halfway across the street when he came out after them—the one in the back was limping, proving his suspicion that he had hit it in the foot—but they weren't moving nearly fast enough to keep away from the young hunter. He raised his gun, took careful aim and fired. Once, twice, three times; a shriek from the monsters punctuated each shot. They reached the other side of the road, numbers now slightly less than they had started with, and Seto managed to fire on the obvious leader of the group. He had the greatest hold on the woman, so when the cerulean-eyed young man shot him through the chest he howled and dropped her to the ground.

The girl let out a cry of protest as the others tried to lift her up, but it broke off when Seto finally reached her and pulled her up to her feet with his free hand, still firing with his gun. _Three, two…_ he counted down the shots in his magazine, knowing it to be empty without having to hear the telltale click, and stuffed it back in the holster at his hip when he reached zero. Pressing the girl up against the wall for her own protection—as well as returning to him the use of his left hand—Seto flicked both wrists and the stakes placed in his sleeves shot into his hands easily.

He drove one through the chest of the leader monster, who had been struggling to rise, and pulled it out by the point on the other side as he rushed past. He could have sworn there were only a dozen or so of the things, but now it appeared as though another ten had been added; this was confusing. Where were they coming from?

Not that they weren't easy to banish, of course. These monsters were incoherent and animalistic, nothing like the higher Vampires. These beasts were _rônin_. It was a misnomer; _rônin_ were masterless samurai in the early ages of Japan, and these things obviously had a master. If not, they couldn't have been moving at all. They were even further from human than Seto's usual prey, though, without words or even the ability for abstract thought. Two things and two things only consumed these creatures: Their lust for blood and the commands given by their master. It was a pitiful existence.

Seto wondered what this girl could have done to warrant an attack from even a single _rônin_, much less this many. There were at least thirty in the fray now, and Seto was steadily wearing down the points on his wooden spikes.

"Look out!" came a high voice from behind. Seto spun around just in time to drive one picket through a monster's eye, far enough to immobilize the thing but without enough force to drive it out the other side. Black blood oozed over the wood, and the young hunter realized he would not be able to retrieve that particular weapon so long as this enemy was alive. That brought his usable weapon count down to two, and one of those he had to use sparingly.

With his free hand—stained with black fluid—Seto reached around the back of his trenchcoat and pulled out the bottle of holy oil. Holding it to his mouth as he danced backward away from the _rônin_'s blows, he twisted off the cap with his tongue and teeth and filled his mouth with the blessed liquid. With all the air he could force from his lungs, Seto showered the beasts with the oil.

* * *

Shizuka cried out and recoiled as her young savior sprayed some unknown liquid from his mouth over the attacking _rônin_. She pressed her back against the wall as hard as she could to avoid being struck by the burning fluid. At first she thought it might have been holy water of some sort, but the way it clung to the skin and faces of her attackers proved her wrong. It was oil. 

Ten times more potent than holy water due to its added surface tension, consecrated oil had been known to kill many a Vampire where silver and stakes couldn't; Shizuka did not want to be added to the list. To avoid becoming a statistic, when the young man took another draught from his bottle she bolted from the wall with all the speed she possessed and darted to stand behind him. Without really knowing why, she took hold his trenchcoat and clutched the black leather tightly between her pale fingers. It was then that she realized she was shaking.

The young man jerked backward as a _rônin_ ducked under the stream of consecrated oil and rammed into his midsection, sending him reeling backward against Shizuka. The remaining oil flew from his mouth and the beast tore the bottle from his fingers and flung it away into the dark even as the oil that had splashed on its back ate through its skin and bone.

Shizuka braced her feet on the ground and held the young man upright, clenching her eyes shut and biting back a cry when the familiar taste of fresh blood tarnished the air, making her mouth water. Another blow hit, then another and another, each time forcing back the pair further and further down the dead street. Finally, with one more blow the young man with those bright blue eyes was thrown back entirely, and both he and Shizuka were sent sprawling out on the ground.

He coughed painfully and struggled to rise—Shizuka saw blood trailing from the corner of his mouth and could practically taste the rusted texture of the abrasions on his face as he turned to look at her. His right eye had been struck hard enough to turn the surrounding skin black, and the young woman wondered if he would be able to see through it once all this was over. _If it ever is,_ she thought. As things stood at that moment it wasn't likely that he would survive the fight, and that hurt Shizuka horribly.

This young man had been dragged into this because she had been an idiot and insisted she go out alone. If only she had brought Ryou or Arken or her brother with her…! She took a deep breath, closing her amber eyes to compose herself as the horde drew ever nearer; she could hear their stumbling, sticky footsteps, smell their tainted blood. This boy was about to die, and it was all because of her own foolishness.

"No," she whispered. "Things happen as they're meant to happen." The young woman swallowed thickly, opened her eyes and lifting her head to look at the struggling young man. "There are no coincidences, only inevitabilities. _Hitsuzen_."

The young man turned his sapphire eyes one her and glared. "What are you doing? Either get out of here or fight!"

But she couldn't fight. She was incapable of killing these things without becoming one herself. That was a curse of her people—they could not hunt these beasts, for every time a true Vampire killed a _rônin_ that Vampire took the monster's place. It was futile and she knew it. And she did not intend to become a monster in front of this valiant young human.

She shot to her feet and grabbed both his wrists, pulling him up and hurrying him down the street, broadening the gap between them and their attackers. "Y-you're a hunter, am I right?" she inquired, turning to face him even as she ran. He nodded, too short of breath to speak. "All right, young hunter, I think I should tell you that we are both going to die unless something drastic is done."

* * *

"And what, praytell," he huffed, "would you suggest?" Seto's piercing blue eyes locked with the girl's bright amber, and his face went pale; this girl, this poor defenseless teenager, had slit pupils. Her gait was steady in spite of the apparent strain that had been placed on her body, and belying the fact that she had been thrown to the ground only moments before she was unscathed. Not a scrape or bruise marred her alabaster skin. 

He had been protecting a Vampire all along.

"Oh, shit," he spat, averting his eyes. It was a bit late now to try to hunt her, he supposed. She _had_ saved him from a back attack, after all. Besides, he had never killed a female before; the thought of hurting a woman made his stomach turn, calling memories he had tried to bury years before Mokuba had bee stolen. "So, did you tick off your master or something? If that why these things are after you?"

"Quite frankly," she replied, "I have no idea." Seto could detect the barest hint of a lie in her words, which meant that she most certainly knew why they were after her but most likely hadn't been expecting it. They ran along for several seconds more, Seto's side erupting in pain as an unpleasant stitch flared, before the girl spoke again. "And I don't have a master. I'm independent."

Seto arched one eyebrow. An independent Vampire? _All_ vampires had a master, regardless of what level they were. Whoever Turned them was their master, there was nothing they could ever do to change that. "Ironic," he hissed with a smirk. "You claim to be masterless, making you a real _rônin_, but you're being attacked by fakes."

The girl shot him an icy glare, but it softened when she seemed to notice the blue tint that had come to his lips and the sides of his face. The young hunter slowed his dash to a sprint, then stumbled over nothing at all and fell flat on the sidewalk. The girl, to his surprise, came about and knelt down beside him.

"Are you all right?" she inquired frantically. "Hunter! Hunter, say something!"

He took a raspy breath as she rolled him onto his back. "S-Seto," he wheezed.

She blinked. "What?"

"That's my name. Kaiba Seto. You?" She stared down at him, expression unreadable, and he sighed. "I figured it's only fair that we know each other before we die. That way we can laugh this up when we meet in hell."

A long moment passed. "Shizuka," she replied quietly.

Seto smiled. "Shizuka. Nice name for a bloodsucker."

Shizuka smiled back. "Thank you."

Their conversation was cut short as the familiar sound of scraping steps and gurgling breaths caught their attention. The _rônin_ turned the corner and lumbered on toward them.

The amber-eyed young woman swallowed heavily. "They're here, Mister Kaiba," she whispered. "They'll reach us a minute."

He gave a weak nod. So this was it, six years without a lead on his brother's whereabouts, six years hunting and killing the higher-level monsters, and he was going to die against a horde of drooling _rônin_. It was pathetic.

"I-I don't want to die," she hissed, taking hold of his right hand. "I don't think you do either. I have a proposition that could save us both." Seto opened his eyes and arched one eyebrow. He knew he was spent, but he also knew that desperate times called for desperate measures; the woman wouldn't Turn him, he could tell that much. What else could she do that could save them?

He took a shaky breath. "What…do you…propose?"

"Become my contracted servant," she said. "If you do you'll have access to all my power and none of my stipulations. You'll still be human, but you'll have enough strength to take out these things."

Seto forced himself up to a sitting position. "Become your servant? Are you _insane_!"

Shizuka glanced sideways at the approaching _rônin_. "You're hunting for a reason, right? All hunters have a reason—are you doing this to die against a bunch of slavering idiots who don't even remember their own names?"

Seto stiffened, eyes widening as the memory of Mokuba screaming for him to help over and over flitted though his mind. He could still see the pallor of his skin when those two Vampires carried him away, still hear his labored breathing…

Shizuka set her jaw. "Or are you doing this for a real reason?"

The young man thought for a moment more, eyes downcast, and then swallowed heavily. "As soon as this fight is over you're going to release me from your service."

"I will," she swore.

"Fine." He lifted his right hand, pulling up his sleeve shakily and helping the young woman to remove the throwing holster strapped to his wrist. "But you might want to hurry up."

The girl took hold of his arm, tilted it to the proper angle and leaned forward, opening her mouth. Cold breath trailed over the elder Kaiba's skin, sending a chill down his spine, and a heartbeat later her sharp fangs brushed over his flesh. Seto ground his teeth and went completely rigid, holding his breath. It was for Mokuba, to stay alive long enough to find him or find out what had happened to him. It was for Mokuba. If he could find his brother by becoming a Vampire's slave, then he would gladly join their ranks. These thoughts didn't make it any easier to bear, however, as the girl inhaled and exhaled once more.

Seto realized that her breath was shaky, even hesitant. She didn't want to do this any more than he did.

At last Shizuka clenched her amber eyes shut and thrust her head downward, sinking her fangs deep into the hunter's flesh and inhaling deeply. Seto almost screamed at the searing pain that rushed through his veins, but bit off the cry into a strangled growl. Shizuka's intake of breath and blood trailed off, and she released his wrist, rising up onto her knees to place a hand on either side of his face and angle it down toward her own.

She pressed her lips to his and forced his own blood out between her teeth. It was hot and metallic when it hit the young man's tongue and he almost gagged. The girl tightened her grip on the sides of his face when the first shudder ran through him, though, and the bile was instantly forced down.

Seto swallowed, and the world exploded in white light.

* * *

Shizuka shielded her eyes with her hand as the force of the contract shoved her back, scraping her legs across the rough ground several feet. The light was almost to bright to see through, especially for her nighttime-eyes, but she forced herself to lower her hand and look nonetheless. Through the tears and the wind she could see the hunter, Kaiba Seto, standing upright once again. 

His trenchcoat flared out behind him and his eyes burned with an intense inner light; his entire form seemed to glow, giving off the white light that burned the Vampire girl's vision. He turned away from her and faced the approaching _rônin_, the beasts too stupid to realize that the light was dangerous, with an expression devoid of any emotion. The hunter held up his right hand, the one she had bitten, and the light intensified in his palm. Seto ground his teeth, glowing eyes narrowing.

"Die."

The light shot out from his hand, shafting out from his fingers like signal lamps and cutting through the darkness of the night sky high above. For an instant the sky was a paler shade of blue, the stars were lost from sight, and Shizuka stared in wonder as she realized that Seto was the sun.

The light hit the approaching horde, and the _rônin_ were obliterated. Not even a scrap of their rag clothing remained, not a speck of ash. It was as though they had never been.

Seto turned about to face the woman once more, eyes still burning even brighter than his skin, and they simply stared at each other for a long moment. The look in his gaze seemed to denote he was about to say something, but instead he let out a sigh and his eyes drifted shut. The light faded from his form and Kaiba Seto, hunter and now contracted servant to Shizuka, passed out on the sidewalk.

* * *

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* * *

**

**Author's Note: **I hope anyone reading this mess is enjoying it. I got tired of all those SxS vampire fics where Seto's some sort of vampire king and Turns Shizuka so she can be his slave or whatever, so I did a bit of a role-reversal. They're still the same characters, but they've been placed in opposite positions. I thought it would be fun to work with a just-as-obsessive-as-ever Kaiba and a just-as-pleasant-as-canon Shizuka, but put them in a situation where their personalities are seriously tested. In any case, I hope everyone several enjoyed this first installment of my first-ever _Yu-Gi-Oh_ fic. Feel free to flame me if you think I've completely screwed up everyone's characters; I do listen to flames, believe it or not. It's a bad habit of mine.

**Special Thanks** to _Moriyasha Neko-hime_, my beta and awesome little sister, for telling me that this story wasn't a complete waste of my time. Oh yeah, and for letting me use her artstuff-breifcase when I drew the first illustration. And taking on the role of Arken when I was planning out his initial scenes. And for playing Ryou when I wanted to be the nasty one. And for…oh, heck. You rock, _Aneki_.


	2. The Jounouchi Estate

**Author's Note: **Thanks to everyone who read chapter one, I was really happy that it got any reviews at all, considering what I'm known for. This story is about as far from _Bound_ as you can get, so I'm still really uncomfortable when I think about how it's going to go over. I'm a major SetoxShizuka fan, thanks to my sister, and I hope that I've been keeping them in character.

All right, another list of Japanese name comparisons with the dub, just so people will see who is who.

**Original Name (Dub Name)**

Jounouchi/Kawai Shizuka (Serenity Wheeler)

Jounouchi Katsuya (Joey Wheeler)

Kaiba Seto (Seto Kaiba, big change there!)

Kaiba Mokuba (Mokuba Kaiba. Scary!)

Bakura Ryou (Ryo Bakura, again with the major differences)

Arken (Yami Bakura, Dark Bakura, etc. This is his original Egyptian name)

Honda Hiroto (Tristan Taylor)

Mazaki Anzu (Tea Gardner)

Otogi Ryuuji (Duke Devlin)

Rebecca Hopkins (Rebecca Hawkins)

Old Man Hopkins (Professor Hawkins)

Ryuzaki (Rex Raptor)

Cecilia Crawford (Pegasus' beloved Cecilia)

Rafael (Rafael. Biggest change of all.)

Valon (Varon. This could be his Japanese name too, but I like the 'l' sound better.)

Well, there. Sense galore. As new characters appear there will be new lists added. Enough with all that junk—here's chapter two!

* * *

**

* * *

Chapter Two: The Jounouchi Estate**

"Shizuka-_dono_," came a quiet voice from the hallway. The young woman said nothing, but the door creaked open anyway. Ryou leaned his snowy-maned head through the doorway and spoke hurriedly. "I've finished treating the young hunter as you requested."

She gave a short nod, fingers steepled just in front of her mouth, eyes deep with thought. Ryou waited a moment more, then pulled back. "Ryou," she called. Instantly the young man reappeared, this time opening the door completely to display his entire body. She opened her mouth to continue, but halted when she found that he was no longer clad in his usual grey pants and white shirt, but instead a pair of black slacks and a turtleneck of the same color. The girl looked him up and down and raised one eyebrow.

Ryou looked down to survey what she found so interesting, and let out a short spurt of laughter. "Oh! Oh, my clothing was stained when I treated the hunter so Arken went to retrieve more for when I was done—this is what he brought me."

"And Arken is with him now?"

Ryou nodded. "Before you ask if that was a wise decision, he is under express orders not to touch him until I get back. If he lays a finger on him before then I'll know—of course—and he'll be in the dungeon for a week. Alone."

She smirked. Arken wouldn't survive a day without his companion, much less a week. She actually doubted either of them could stand being apart for more than a couple minutes. "Well, as long as you can keep him in line…"

"I am the only one who can, Mistress," he said in reply. "Aside from you."

Shizuka nodded. "All right." She waved a hand in dismissal. "Keep an eye on him until he wakes up. When he does, have my brother bring him up here for me."

Once again Ryou turned to go, this time hesitating on his own. "_Anou_…Shizuka-_dono_?" She made a monosyllabic sound of inquiry. "I've been wondering about the wound on his wrist. Did you really—"

"Desperate times call for desperate measures, Ryou," she interrupted. "And we were both rather desperate." The pale-haired young man nodded in understanding and closed the door at last, leaving the girl alone with her thoughts. She sighed and leaned back in her seat, straightening out her white button-up shirt and putting her feet up on the desk, swiveling her chair around until she was comfortable.

She would have to release the hunter, she had promised she would. It would be painful, certainly, but she was true to her word. At least, as far as vampires went she was honest; she didn't lie when she could help it. But to break a contract so suddenly… The young woman massaged her wrist thoughtfully, wincing at the pain that flared at the contact. A contracted servant shared everything with their master, and vice versa; as a result, Shizuka had a small wound on her right wrist that refused to heal.

She sighed again, surveying the slight gash. "Desperate times call for desperate measures," she repeated.

* * *

"Desperate is right!" Arken scoffed, looking at the unconscious young man with no little disdain. "So she actually did it, huh? After all those times she swore she never would…"

"Apparently she had little choice."

The as-yet-nameless hunter lay unconscious on the leftmost of the four beds in the infirmary, farthest from the open window. Ryou had pulled down the young man's blanket to check his vitals, giving a fair view of the hunter's torso—or at least the parts that hadn't been dressed. This position also gave both white-haired men a perfect view of the silver locket around the young man's neck, the only ornamentation remaining on his person. His crucifixes had been removed, though anyone surveying the physician and his comrade would wonder how. After all, they were Vampires as well, weren't they?

The hunter's wounded eye had been covered and bound, as well as the wrist that had been bitten, and pretty much every other joint on his body. There were older wounds as well, all of them treated—Ryou had been forced to scrape open several older wounds that had been obviously contaminated and lingered on the brink of infection—and dressed. What interested the darker of the two white-haired men were not this figure's wounds, but rather a particular series of scars along his midsection. Arken knew what wounds caused by a kick or punch looked like, and recognized the telltale discoloration of old internal bleeding. The boy's skin around his torso was patchy where he had been stricken too many times, dyeing the flesh a slightly different color, and the ragged scars around those patches only proved his suspicions.

Ryou cocked his head to one side as he pulled up the blanket to the hunter's shoulders, marking down his findings on the clipboard sitting on the bedside table. "Are you all right?" he queried, noticing his companion's silence.

The slightly-taller man nodded and averted his eyes. "I think this kid was abused," he said. "Judging by the size and style of the scars it was a man, but the lack of defensive scarring on his hands makes me curious as to who."

"His father, probably," Ryou supplied, voice dropping. His brow furrowed, brown eyes narrowing ever so slightly. "It's amazing what mortals do to each other, isn't it?" He lifted his gaze, locking eyes with Arken, and gave a melancholy smile. "But people like Shizuka-_dono_ are the ones they call monsters."

Arken was silent for a long moment before letting out a sigh and leaning back in his chair. He crossed his legs and perched one elbow on the back of the chair, closing his eyes and shaking his head. "Every race has its problems," he muttered. "Our Mistress' is no different." He looked back at the young hunter. "And speaking of problems, what's she gonna do with him once he wakes up? She can't honestly want to keep him in her service—he'll kill her first chance he gets."

"Katsuya would kill him first," Ryou replied easily, sitting back down and pushing up the oversized sleeves of his turtleneck. Obviously it wasn't actually his, but Arken's; they were close in size and weight, but the more calculating of the two had unmistakably longer limbs. "And she didn't say what she's going to do. When he wakes up we are to summon Katsuya and have him bring the hunter to Shizuka-_dono_'s office. From there…" He shrugged in elaboration.

"And until then we've got babysitting duty, right?" Ryou nodded and Arken sighed again, rolling his deep blue eyes. "It's gonna get awfully boring just staring at him for hours. Who knows when he'll wake up?"

"Or even if he'll wake up at all," came a voice from the doorway. Both pale-haired young men turned to find themselves staring at a teenaged girl, apparently a year or two older than Shizuka, with deep brown hair and bright blue eyes. Though obviously of Japanese decent, the girl spoke with an American accent. She smiled. "Sorry, am I interrupting something?"

Ryou shook his head. "By no means, Mazaki-_san_." He gestured to another chair sitting in the corner. "Have a seat."

The girl held up one hand and politely declined. "I'm just here to deliver a message from Lady Cecilia. Valon got burned a bit on the way to Europe—wrong direction to completely avoid the sun, you know—so Her Ladyship called me out to take her reply." She smiled, eyes sliding from Ryou to the still figure on the bed. Those same blue eyes, so full of compassion, turned dark as they narrowed. "That's the one?"

Arken glanced sideways at his ward, then back to the young woman. "Yeah, Shizuka's new toy. Pretty thing, even I'll admit, but obviously not too bright. I mean, what kind of human would _agree_ to become a Vampire's contra—"

"Arken!" Ryou interjected, eyes narrowed. He gave a meaningful glance in the girl's direction. "Are you forgetting who you are speaking to?"

Mazaki smiled and shook her head. "It's okay," she said, her voice laced with lingering sadness. "It was a long time ago; I don't mind so much anymore."

"But Anzu—"

She shook her head, trying to ignore the nostalgic melancholy chill that ran through her when the calm young man spoke her given name. It had been so long since anyone had called her that, she had almost forgotten what it sounded like. "I was the one who made the mistake back then, not him." She looked at the hunter again, forcing another smile. "I just hope this one's terms and conditions turn out better than…" She bit her bottom lip and took a deep breath. "Better than _his_ did."

Arken smiled in return and rose to his feet, striding over to where the young woman stood. "Are you tired?" He placed a hand on her shoulder and leaned over to stand at eye-level with her. Those deep blue eyes, as close to black as Ryou's gaze, housed a glint they hadn't before—the cold edge had not been demolished, but in this young woman's presence it was considerably dulled. "There's no way you're going to make it back to Europe before the sun comes up; how about you stay here for the day?"

"I-I couldn't," Mazaki began, only to be cut off by an affectionate pat on her back.

"Of course you could—you're one of Shizuka-_dono_'s friends from before, you're welcome any time." Arken grinned broadly and the girl's conviction bent, then broke. She let out a sigh, as though she found his insistence annoying, but her smile brightened considerably.

She nodded. "I would like that," she said softly.

Ryou smiled, eyes casting from the girl to the young man. "Arken, take her to her guest room. I will notify Shizuka-_dono _that Mazaki-_san_ will be staying with us through the day." He looked back at the young woman. "I believe there is still some breakfast on the table, if you're hungry."

Mazaki gave an appreciative nod, chin-length hair obscuring her features for a moment, but said nothing. Arken and Ryou exchanged a sympathetic glance as the taller of the two led her out into the hall, hand never leaving her back; the door clicked shut behind them and Ryou let out a sigh, smile fading as he turned to look down at the hunter. "I hate to think of what losing you will do to our Mistress," he murmured, reaching out to brush the young man's chestnut bangs from his pale face. "Contracts with humans never seem to turn out well."

He closed his deep brown eyes and leaned back in his chair, letting out a long breath as he settled in for sleep. The windows were all outfitted with blackout curtains so there was no chance of any sunlight leaking into the room, but Ryou still found himself wary of sleeping in the infirmary. The last time he had had been years ago, and that remained the darkest time of his life—indeed, in the lives of many members of Shizuka's court. He had never seen so many Vampires cry.

As these thoughts and tarnished memories drifted around in his half-exhausted mind, Ryou found himself drifting off to sleep.

* * *

"_We're losing him, Ryou!" the young man hollers, his deep blue eyes wide. The cloth in his hands is soaked crimson through and through, staining his pale fingers the color of garnet._

_The other young man, white-haired like his companion but brown-eyed, grinds his teeth. "Everybody stand back!" he commands. The crowd gathered around the bleeding figure on the table recoils immediately, though none leave the room. That's dangerous—the scent and sight of so much blood is likely to drive any of them into a frenzy any moment. The brown-eyed man doubts he has ever seen so much blood before, and all from one small human. "Clear!" he shouts, holding the defibrillator pads in his hands against the brown-haired youth's chest. The boy convulses as the machine crackles, but once the electricity abates he is still once more._

"_Come on, kid," whimpers the young blond man standing just behind the white-haired physician. His brown eyes are narrowed and the barest hint of scarlet tears stain the corners of his eyes. "Come on, don't leave her now…"_

"_Clear!" the physician yells again. Again the machine shoot a jolt of electricity through the still young figure on the table, and again he lies still. Grinding his teeth, the white-haired man throws the pads aside and presses both bloody hands to the boy's chest. "One, two, three, four," he presses in time with his counting; upon reaching ten he leans down, pressing his mouth to boy's, and exhales deeply. The wounded figure's chest rises, but he does not stir. There are tears in the doctor's eyes now as well, a shimmer of liquid brighter than his gaze and hot again his skin. _

_He tries again. "One, two, three…"_

_The other white-haired young man stares as his comrade repeats this process over and over, each time his motions becoming more unsteady, his fingers fumbling to plug the bloody boy's nose as he forces air into his lungs. "Ryou," the blue-eyed man says softly. Those eyes, already almost black in color, are even darker with pain._

"_One, t-t-two…thre…three…" He chokes off a sob, his breath ragged. _

"_Ryou," his comrade repeats. He places a hand on the other white-haired figure's shoulder, the touch tentative. "Ryou, he's gone."_

_The physician slaps away his companion's hand and shouts. "No! He can't be—I've never—" He looks between the youth on the table and his comrade, eyes wide with disbelief, face drawn and haggard. "I-I've **never**…" He bites his bottom lip and a shudder runs through him. He is silent for the space of a heartbeat._

_The taller white-haired man is ready when his companion collapses against him, sobbing into his chest, hands curled into fists. The smaller figure screams and weeps and shakes with wracking sobs; the longer-limbed young man keeps his arms wrapped firmly about his comrade's shoulders, eyes closed and head bowed, expression angry and broken._

_Slowly the reality of what has happened here sinks in, and the rest of the crowd begins to cry. One figure inparticular, however, a young woman with brown hair and deep blue eyes, simply stares at the now-dead youth laying before her. Her eyes are wide and blank, though there are scarlet tears shining in them. She whispers, "No…" and takes a halting step forward, hands outstretched. _

_She touches the boy's face, brushing his hair back from his eyes—it is affixed to his skin with drying blood, and she has to break the scarlet mess to complete her task. "R-Ryuzaki?" she rasps. "**Ryuzaki**?"_

_A black-haired young man with bright green eyes comes forward out of the crowd. "Mazaki—"_

"_Ryuzaki? Ryuzaki, wake up!" she says, her voice raising in volume and growing more ragged with each word. "Ryuzaki!" The black-haired young man wraps his arms around her shoulders and midsection and pulls her back. She struggles, but cannot pull away. "**Ryuzaki**!"_

* * *

Ryou started back to wakefulness as a cold hand touched the back of his neck. He opened his eyes and lifted his head, wondering when he had laid it down, looking up to see Arken smiling down at him. "This is hardly a place to be sleeping," he smirked.

The young man yawned and leaned back, chair creaking. "I'm supposed to stay with the hunter," he said softly, reaching up to rub one eye. "Shizuka-_dono_'s orders, remember?"

Arken resituated himself so he was perched on the edge of the hunter's bed, arms folded over his chest. "You're going to hurt yourself if you sleep in here today," he said.

"I'll be fine," he assured his near-twin, gesturing around the room. "Blackout curtains, air conditioning," he poked one of the guardrails on the bed, "a call button—what more could I ask for?"

"There are too many memories in this room and you know it," Arken asserted. "You'll have nightmares again, and I don't want to deal with you waking up screaming every night so soon after we got you calmed down."

Ryou slanted him a dark look. He had stopped having nightmares almost four years ago, so it wasn't as recent an occurrence as his companion insinuated. Of course, he _had_ just had the first one in all those years, and it just _happened_ to be while he was asleep in the infirmary… He sighed. "Maybe you're right," he conceded. "But someone needs to watch him while we're sleeping."

Arken took hold of the smaller man's arm and helped him to stand. "I'll call for one of the maids, or maybe Rebecca."

"It should be a man."

The blue-eyed young man arched one snowy eyebrow, mouth cracking open to display his teeth in a wicked half-grin. "Oh, what, are you afraid Ribbon is going to have her way with him while he's asleep?" The merest thought of the young woman doing such a thing was absurd, to actually hear that thought spoken made Ryou laugh.

He shook his head. "No, of course not!" he assured his comrade as they headed for the door. "I'm afraid he'll slit the poor girl's throat if he wakes up before we do."

At that Arken stopped walking, in turn stopping Ryou. He thought for a moment, lips pursing slightly, and touched his tongue to one of his teeth in an aloof habit. "Hm," he said, as though it explained everything. "You may have a point. I'll have the old man watch him, then."

"He has work to do during the day."

"His granddaughter can do it."

Ryou slanted his comrade a look that said, quite clearly, that he was a moron. "I, for one, would like see Rebecca manage to dust the curtains in spite of the fact that she is so small she can barely reach the ropes to draw them in the morning."

Arken shrugged. "She'll figure something out, she's a smart kid."

The smaller of the two men knew that he could still win this argument, but didn't bother to keep up to attempt anymore. He was too tired, his vision blurry, and the memory of Mazaki Anzu's voice screaming that dead boy's name over and over still rang through his mind. He shivered, and Arken looked down at him with concern.

"Are you all right?" he asked, voice laced with true consideration. Ryou knew he was one of two people in the entire world Arken actually worried about, and smiled at the young man's words, giving a slow nod. Arken didn't seem to buy into his feint, but sighed and rolled his eyes instead of inquiring further. "All right, be that way. I'll find out later anyway."

They continued down the hall in companionable silence.

When Ryou woke up at noon screaming at the top of his lungs, Arken was there to wrap his arms around his shoulders and pull him back down against the pillow, murmuring into his snowy hair that everything was all right.

* * *

The first sensation Seto registered as he drifted to the land of the living was pain. Pain in his head, centered behind his right eye; pain in his chest, particularly around his ribcage; pain in his knees and elbows, his feet and hands. New pain and old pain mingling together to create a sensation that was anything but pleasant, and yet extremely familiar. It was a good thing that sensation was familiar, because it was the only thing he recognized when he opened his eyes—or, rather, his eye. The right one, the one that hurt the worst out of any of his injuries, was covered by some material proven to be gauze and medical tape to his probing fingers.

"Oh, so you're finally awake!" chimed a voice to his right, the hunter's blind side.

Seto painfully tilted his head, looking away from the pale grey ceiling, to see a young man with white hair sitting next to his bed. The man was smiling broadly, seeming genuinely happy that he had regained consciousness, and his nearly-black eyes sparkled. The man was dressed in common clothes—a pair of dark grey pants and a white t-shirt—but the snowy shade of his hair and porcelain complexion of his skin proved that he was anything but common. For all appearances, the young man wasn't much older than Seto, if any at all, but there was wisdom in his deep brown eyes that made the hunter's head reel.

"Oh, goody," came a significantly lower voice to his left. Now Seto turned to find another white-haired young man, this one sitting with his chair backward, arms folded over the back. His eyes, too, were nearly black in their darkness, but where the first man's had been brown underneath the shadow this man's were blue. His smile, also, was different—dark and tinged with malice. He clearly did _not_ want Seto here, but wasn't going to upset his cohort by showing it.

The young man looked between the two white-haired figures and then shook his head lightly, holding a hand over his operable eye. "I don't think I can handle this," he muttered.

A moment passed in tense silence. "Oh!" said the happier young man. "Do you think you're seeing double? You're not, I promise."

Seto looked out from between his fingers, looking his impromptu companion up and down. "Twins?" he inquired at last.

The lankier man cackled. "Me and Ryou?" he scoffed. "Hell no."

"But—"

"There is a resemblance, we understand that," said the first man, apparently Ryou. "But no, we are not related. Not in the sense a human would understand, in any case." He turned his dazzling smile on his near-twin of a companion, and the man shrugged.

Seto let out a sigh and closed his eye, allowing himself to sink back against the bed in which he lay. It hurt to breathe. "Where…am I?" he inquired, voice a dry whisper. The other man, the one who wasn't Ryou, laughed and asked if he had forgotten; the hunter struggled to recall. He remembered sleeping in the forest on the outskirts of the city, leaving his bedroll behind when he went hunting, walking through the city… "There was a girl," he murmured. "She was being attacked. By _rônin_." Ryou nodded as the young man continued. "I tried to fight them off but there were just too many, they kept coming and kept coming."

Another moment passed, then Seto sat bolt upright. "She was a Vampire!" he shouted, before the pain in his side flared and caused him to double over in a coughing fit. Ryou placed a hand on his back and patted softly until the gags and chokes subsided, and when Seto was still once more the snowy-haired young man took hold of the hunter's shoulders and pushed him back down to his pillow.

"You shouldn't push yourself—your body's under a lot of stress right now." Seto let out a sigh and allowed himself to be lain down properly again, closing his eye. "Did you know half of your wounds were infected? We had to scrape them open and treat them properly."

That explained why he was in so much pain. Seto turned his single sapphire eye on the apparent physician again and swallowed thickly. "You didn't answer," he said. Ryou arched both eyebrows and cocked his head to one side. Seto took a deep breath. "Where am I?"

"Oh, that," he said softly, averting his eyes. He took a breath and stood up straight, as though steeling himself for a blow. "You, young hunter, are currently on Jounouchi Shizuka-_dono_'s estate on the east outskirts of Domino."

"Consider yourself lucky—there hasn't been a human male here aside from the old man in years," said Ryou's darker-voiced lookalike. "If Katsuya and the rest had their way you wouldn't be here at all. You've got a lot of competition, you know."

Seto arched the one eyebrow that didn't scream in pain as he turned to look at the slightly-older man. "I beg your pardon?"

Ryou pulled Seto's blankets back up around his shoulders, fussing around as though he were tucking in a little kid for the night. "Oh, don't listen to Arken. He's still feeling bad that he wasn't there to protect the Mistress." The young man sighed. "If he keeps it up like this he'll never forgive himself."

"Hey, my uncertainties aren't the issue here," Arken warned, rising to his feet. He pointed down at the hunter. "I'm not the only one who thinks it's kind of dangerous to have a _Vampire Hunter_ on a compound belonging to a _Vampire_. In close proximity with that Vampire's overprotective brother _and_ his obsessive friends, I might add."

"They're your friends too," Ryou asserted.

"That's not th—"

The sound of someone clearing their throat broke off the relative argument in an instant, and all three young men turned to the doorway. The door was wide open and standing just outside it was a tall, bronze-haired man, at least two years older than Seto. His eyes were brown and sharp, glittering with the residual light of his smirk as he glanced between Ryou and Arken. "I hate t'intrude, you guys know how much I love watchin' you bicker," those eyes slid from the white-haired figures to the bandaged young hunter, "but if he's awake then I gotta take him t'see _Nee-san_."

Ryou took a step forward as Arken snickered, sinking back down into his chair, which had somehow been turned properly around in the time since he rose. The taller man hung his arms over the back of the chair and sent a dark look to Seto; the hunter merely blinked in reply.

"He is in no condition to move, Katsuya-_san_," he declared. "Perhaps tomorrow."

Katsuya shook his head and stepped into the room. Seto could see that he was wearing loose black slacks and a long-sleeved black t-shirt; over one arm was draped some green article of clothing, judging by the way it fell and the little bits of seam that the hunter could see it was a trenchcoat. "Perhaps," he mimicked poorly, "now, Ryou. We have our orders, and you know better than to ignore them."

Ryou looked back at Seto, brow creased. "Yes, yes I suppose so." He sighed and turned back to Katsuya. "Allow him to dress first," he commanded. "He will join you in the hall momentarily."

When the blond named Katsuya did not move after several seconds, Arken sighed and, placing a hand on either knee, pushed himself to his feet and turned to face him entirely. "He told you to step out."

"And I have my orders."

Arken stepped forward, looking just as nonchalant as he had been before. An unpleasant feeling seized in the pit of Seto's stomach, and he knew something was wrong. It was only when the tall young man had come to a stop just in front of the newcomer that the hunter placed it—when Arken moved, just then, he had made no sound. Not even the slightest scuff of shoes on tile.

The malicious white-haired man leaned in close. "Just give the guy his privacy, Katsuya. Just for a minute."

"You're wasting my time," Katsuya replied shortly, brown eyes narrowing. He spoke each word as though it were a separate entity, each one capable of ripping the slender man before him to shreds. "I'll take him to see her in boxers if that's all he's wearing."

Arken sighed and lowered his head, lifting one hand as though about to place it on the blond's shoulder. Instead, however, his pale fingers slipped around Katsuya's neck and his slender arm lifted him easily off his feet. He looked back over his shoulder at Seto with a dark grin firmly in place. "You'll have to forgive my friend, he's about to become rather indisposed." Katsuya glared down his companion's arm, eyes flashing angrily. Those eyes glowed bright red for a fraction of a second as his anger peaked; Katsuya growled deeply and bared his fangs, gripping Arken's arm with both his dark hands.

"_Nee-san_'s hearing about this," the blond warned, voice a gravelly hiss.

"Promise?" Arken queried, arching one eyebrow and continuing to smirk. He looked over his shoulder again and waved. "We'll be in the hall." With that he took a single stride forward and closed the door behind him with his free hand.

Seto stared after them with no little awe—the blond was a Vampire, of that much he was certain, and judging by the flash of color in his eyes he was a high-level one at that. And yet this strange white-haired man, Arken, spoke to him as though he were an idiot and carried him away with all the concern of a man taking out the garbage.

Ryou disappeared behind one of the curtains—presumably separating one bed from another—and reappeared carrying a black bundle. "It's not much, but it's all we have that will fit you," he apologized. Seto opened his mouth to inquire as to what was about to happen to his escort and the white-haired man with him, but Ryou cut him off with a dazzling smile. "Don't worry about Arken and Katsuya," he replied to the unspoken inquiry, "they always act like this. They've been debating over who rightfully holds the title of Head Guard for years, this is just another one of their scuffles."

The blue-eyed young man took the offered clothing, but did not move his eyes from Ryou. A long second passed. "You work for a Vampire," he said. It wasn't a question, but Ryou nodded. "And, apparently, this place is full of Vampires." Again, he nodded. Seto narrowed his eyes. "Are you a Vampire?"

The young man was silent for a minute, eyes dark with thought, then he opened his mouth to reply. A loud thumping rang out against the door, and Katsuya's voice could be heard from beyond. "Hurry it up already!"

Ryou sighed and gave a sympathetic smile to the young hunter. "Perhaps you should do as he says. Would you like help?"

* * *

The door creaked open, summoning the attention of the young woman sitting at the desk. She lifted her head from the letter laid carefully out on the rosewood before her and found herself looking at a tall young man with deep brown hair and eyes to match. He bowed in the doorway, sand-colored trenchcoat flowing around him with the motion. "Hiroto-_kun_," she said softly, surprised. She hadn't seen Hiroto in almost a week—he was supposed to be on vacation with the Head Maid, Ribbon. "What is it?"

"Your brother just sent word that the hunter has woken up," the young man said quietly. "He'll be here shortly." The young woman nodded and turned to look back down at the letter Mazaki had brought. "…Shizuka-_dono_?" She lifted her head once more to find the man fidgeting in the doorway.

"What's wrong?"

"I was just…the guys and me…we…" He swallowed heavily and lifted his brown eyes to meet hers once more. "Shizuka-_dono_, why did you choose him to make a contract? The rest of us are more than willing to give ourselves over to you completely." He squinted, eyes distant, and shook his head slowly. "It doesn't seem fair."

She sighed and leaned back in her seat; it swiveled slightly to one side from the shift of weight. "Hiroto-_kun_," she said, picking her words carefully, "I didn't have much choice in the matter. He saved my life before he even knew my name—that should be reason enough for you to trust him."

He shook his head. "He's a hunter, Shizuka-_dono_. He's spent his entire life killing our kind for no reason other than the fact that _he_ thinks we're evil. He doesn't know you, he doesn't know the dangers you're put through, he wasn't there when you were—"

"Hiroto!" she snapped, silencing him immediately. He lifted hi eyes to meet hers and found them blazing. "I had no choice in this matter and neither did he—he was in the wrong place at the wrong time, that's all. I did not choose him because it was what I have always wanted, I chose him because he was there."

The young man clenched his hands into fists. "A-And if it had been your brother? What if Katsuya had been there, or even Ryuuji? Or…me?" The young woman blinked, not quite understanding what he was implying. Hiroto took a deep breath and bowed his head, shoulders slumping. "I-I loved you first, Shizuka. I-I've always—"

"Please don't," she said, her voice a low whisper. Hiroto lifted his gaze again to find his mistress with her head bowed, auburn hair obscuring her features. "Please, Hiroto-_kun_, not now." She swallowed thickly, closing her amber eyes. "Go to Ribbon," she commanded.

"But Sh—"

"Leave."

Her voice was sharp, the single word more scathing than any insult or physical wound. Hiroto ground his teeth and lowered his head, bowing low. "Yes, Mistress," he muttered, backing out the open double-doors.

Those doors swung shut, almost as though of their own accord; when the lock clicked Shizuka slumped down against her desk, hair flowing out behind her like woven silk. Scarlet tears stained the paper sitting in front of her and her shoulders shook with sobs. Why did he have to be like that? It wasn't as though she had had any other choice—surely he would rather see her alive with some human as her contracted servant than dead at the hands of a _rônin_ horde.

She curled both hands into fists, long fingernails digging into her palms with the ease of miniscule blades. She smelled the acrid aroma of Vampire blood and ground her teeth, lip curling in distaste. She repositioned her fingers to touch the tiny wounds with their tips and the cuts sealed over instantly.

A faint knock rang out on the door and she lifted her head hastily, wiping one hand across her eyes to rid them of her garnet tears. "Yes? Who is it?"

The door swung open and a petite blond leaned in. The girl couldn't have been much older than thirteen, and a small thirteen at that—her shoulder barely rose over the ornate golden door handle. A faint spray of freckles littered her nose and cheeks, making her appear rather childish, but the depth in her gaze and deep-set sorrow in her features quickly cancelled out any lingering immaturity displayed by such a feature. Her blue eyes, though pale in color behind her half-moon glasses, were dark with concern. "Shizuka-_dono_, Mazaki-_san_ is awake," she said quietly. "Would you like to see her?"

Shizuka shook her head. "Later—I have a matter to attend to at the moment."

The girl pushed the door open entirely and swept her long golden hair over her shoulder. She, like everyone else on the estate save Ryou and Shizuka, was garbed in black from head to toe: A long sleeved, button-up black shirt covered her torso—and thus the scarring that Shizuka knew to be there—and tucked into a pair of tight black pants. In turn, the girl's slacks were tucked into a pair of heavy black boots, decorated with two silver buckles over the laces. Around her neck she wore a black choker extremely similar to a collar, complete with a chromium buckle, and identical ornaments adorned either wrist, holding her loose sleeves in place.

"It's about the hunter, right?" she ventured, cocking her head to one side. "The one in the infirmary."

Shizuka arched one eyebrow. "And how would you know about that?"

"Mazaki-_san_ slept in my room yesterday," she said easily, shrugging, "and she mentioned him. She doesn't approve, you know." Shizuka nodded in understanding while the girl continued. "Mostly, though, it's because Arken called me and Grandpa out to watch him while he and Ryou-_san_ slept."

"Ah," the amber-eyed young woman breathed. She locked gazes with her young assistant and smiled. "Yes, this matter involves the hunter. Tell Mazaki that I'll meet her in the main hall in an hour or so. Until then…give her something to drink—she's probably starving."

The blond girl giggled. "Raiding the fridge as we speak, Mistress. I'll go let her know." With that she turned and walked out, closing the door behind her. Shizuka watched her go with a smile—Rebecca's presence always cheered her up. She wondered how she had survived before the little girl came to live with her. It had already been five years, hadn't it? She had grown so much in those few years, overcoming the pain that initially landed her in this place to become a determined, strong young woman. She was going to make some man very, very proud one day.

And that man would probably, judging how things were going between them, be Atem's little human. Shizuka struggled to recall his name—something starting with an _M_? "Miku—Mo—hm." She pursed her lips and shook her head. She had only met the boy three times, and they had yet to be formally introduced. She had always thought it was because Atem preferred to have as little to do with humans as possible.

Although, come to think of it, the boy that was Atem's contracted servant—his younger brother or some such nonsense, a little Japanese boy named Yugi—was a human, wasn't he? Cecilia's was her husband Pegasus, a Vampire, and Darts' had been his comrade since he was a child, a boy named Amelda. Whether that particular servant was still human Shizuka was uncertain. The Vampire Lord ruling over Japan had taken a human servant as well, even if it was recently. How strange, that two out of the four Vampire Lords would have mortals as their contracted servants, and that those two would be the ones who most loathed humankind.

Shizuka had a mortal servant now, as well; Mazaki Anzu had had one once, Ryuzaki, as had the Messenger Valon—though he never mentioned the name of the poor soul he must have had one, or else he wouldn't be able to fly.

How many Vampires took humans as their contracted servants? And if they were as numerous as it seemed at that moment to Shizuka, why did the practice seem to be so looked down upon? It didn't make sense.

She sighed and shook her head, ridding her mind of such confusing thoughts and proceeding to clear off her desk. It would have to be clear when the Hunter, Kaiba Seto, came in, for more reasons than just to keep him from seeing what contacts she had in the world.

* * *

Seto opened the door and stepped out into the hall, pausing when his bare feet touched the soft maroon carpeting. He had wished he had been given shoes when he was stepping on tile, but now he was glad for their absence. It had been a long time since he set foot on a carpeted floor that wasn't soaked through with blood.

The man named Katsuya stood leaning against the wall just across from the doorway. Next to him stood Arken, smiling brightly; Seto decided the white-haired man's grin was due to the numerous scuffs and abrasions visible on Katsuya's face, as well as the fact that his hair was mess and his knuckles obviously bruised. Arken, meanwhile, was entirely unscathed.

Katsuya pushed himself away from the wall and stood straight, his eyes were almost level with Seto's, but the slight difference proved that he was at least an inch shorter than the chestnut-haired hunter. "Come on," he said, waving one hand as he turned to head down the hall.

A hand brushed his shoulder, and Seto turned to see Ryou standing in the doorway, smile still affixed firmly on his features. "You'll be fine, don't worry," he assured the young man. On Seto's other side, Arked scoffed and rooled his deep blue eyes.

"Fine, yeah, right. If you call a broken bone or three _fine_ then he's going to be downright peachy."

Seto arched an eyebrow, confused, and almost inquired what the angry young man was implying when another voice cut him off. "Hey," Katsuya hollered from his place far ahead. "Are you comin' or what?"

Taking a deep breath, Seto strode forward. His steps, unsteady at first, grew more sure as he continued forward, strength returning to his wounded limbs. He had trouble moving ahead due to another reason as well, though, and that one did not abate with continued motion. With one eye covered he completely lacked any depth perception, causing him to constantly have to calculate just how far his feet were from the floor, whether he would bump into that little table as he passed it, if leaning this far in this direction would make his shoulder brush the wall... His head spun by the time they reached the double doors at the end of the hall.

Katsuya put a gloved hand to either door and pushed, throwing them open and stepping out into the world beyond. When Seto reached the doors, a step and a half behind his escort, he stopped in dumbfounded awe. A blast of cool night air washed over him, tousling his hair, and the light of the full moon high above shone down on the magnificent sight stretched out before him.

This place—this _estate_ as Ryou had called it, though Seto would have used the word _compound_—had to be at least a quartermile across, he thought as he paused on the threshold, breath caught in his throat. Katsuya, bronze hair turned pewter in the moonlight, walked determinedly forward, feet making only the slightest sound as they pressed against the grass of the courtyard. He paused when he found that he was not being followed, and turned to his ward.

Seto continued to stare about the courtyard with awe etched clearly into his features, and Katsuya smiled proudly, allowing the hunter another moment of awestruck silence before he rugged him on. "Hurry up, she's waitin' for us."

Seto started out of his reverie, looking away at last from the ornate architecture—almost Gothic in style—of the building and the dazzling stars high above, to turn back to his escort. Realizing he had let his amazement show, the young man steeled his face into a blank expression and padded out the door and down the three steps to the courtyard. There was no walkway, so the young man's bare feet pressed down only on the chill grass; the sudden damp prickle and change in temperature sent a shiver down his spine that was not entirely unpleasant.

"You're not going to be here long, so you'd better enjoy it while you can," Katsuya suggested. "This is more of the compound than just about any non-employed mortal has seen in a quarter century."

Seto did not reply, noting silently that this man used the word he would have and wondering why, but looked about the courtyard anyway. There were four buildings that he could distinguish, the ones on either side both three stories high. Attached to the left side of the building on Seto's right was a smaller, single-story structure, like a carriage house. Though smaller than the building to which it was joined, the building was still the size of a house. Turning to the structure on his left, Seto saw another such house attached to the side closest the infirmary. Interesting.

"That," Katsuya said, pointing to his right, "is the East Quarter-Estate. It belongs to the guards." He paused. "And anyone they let in." He pointed left as he continued across the lawn. "That's the West Quarter-Estate, belongin' to the mortals. The maids, the old man an' his granddaughter live there. It also has a series of guest rooms for lesser company and temporary employees." He gestured behind them. "That's the South Quarter-Estate, it holds the infirmary, the high guestrooms and one of Arken's bedrooms."

Seto blinked. The bewilderment about the fact that the building he had just left held only one of the odd man's bedrooms was enough to confuse his already addled brain, but it was dwarfed by the fact that he was being told anything at all. "You just said I'm not going to be here long—why tell me all this? It's kind of stupid, if you ask me."

The man shot an icy glare over his shoulder. "Nobody did ask you, kid. And I'm only doin' this because I was told to. Even once you're released you're going to be here for a while—wounds like that take a while to heal."

The young man looked himself up and down, brow furrowing, and looked back up at his escort with confusion. "I've had worse," he said simply, "and it always heals quickly."

"That's not what I meant," Katsuya replied cryptically.

Seto turned to look about once more, catching a glimpse of a massive, round work of architecture behind the East Quarter-Estate and a flash of color from the west side of the building they headed toward that left the impression of flowers on his mind. A garden, certainly, but what had that round thing been?

His legs began to protest and the young man quickened his pace, determined to make it across the courtyard without assistance. He ceased his childish sightseeing and came even with Katsuya just as they reached the short series of steps leading up t the door. Katsuya went ahead, throwing open the doors in much the same manner he had when they exited the infirmary wing, green trenchcoat flaring out behind him like emerald wings.

The blond held up both hands to gesture at the building they had just entered. "This is Shizuka-_dono_'s wing, containing her office, library, court room and her chambers." On the last word he pointed to a hall that had just come up on the left, which ended in a grey door with no knob. Amidst all the Gothic and Elizabethan design, such a modern portal looked extremely odd. Seto noted the keypad placed just beside the door and arched his eyebrows thoughtfully.

"By chambers," he said quietly, looking back at Katsuya, "you mean her bedroom, right?"

"Don't even try it, kid. The door's equipped with a state-of-the-art locking system and only three people have the code on the whole compound." Seto gave a final look at the door as they passed it.

Remembering all the other 'state-of-the-art' doors he had broken through during his time as hunter, he smirked. _I bet I could break that code before anyone could even call for a guard._

As though able to hear his thoughts—which wasn't entirely improbable, considering just what this man was—Katsuya glanced back at the blue-eyed, bandaged young man. "Welcome, young hunter, to the estate of Jounouchi Shizuka. I am Jounouchi Katsuya, Head Guard. If you lay one hand on my sister I won't hesitate to suck you dry."

Seto remained silent, expression stoic. Katsuya smiled and continued down the hall. After a moment more of near-silent padding down the red carpet, Seto murmured thoughtfully, "But if you were allowed to kill me you would have done it a while ago, right?" Katsuya stifled a growl. "That means you must be under express orders from Shizu-_kaugh_!" The last syllable came out as a strangled gasp, for Katsuya had spun around and clamped his hand over the hunter's mouth, slamming his head back against the wall and taking the rest of him with it. Seto gasped for breath through the Vampire's fingers, recalling the familiar sensation of fingers over his mouth—though back then they had been slender, feminine and much darker…

* * *

Shizuka started, eyes widening as she held a hand to her throat. She couldn't breathe; no matter how hard she struggled to inhale all that flooded her lungs was the barest hint of air. She felt something dig into her cheek, and lifted her hand to feel a small indentation in the skin on one side of her mouth, like someone was pressing their claws into her skin.

The young woman leaned over her desk, struggling to breathe, struggling for even a little more air. The wound on her wrist flared, sending lancing pain up her arm as her vision blurred and a fit of dizziness swept over her.

_What…_ she thought, _what's happening to me?_

* * *

Seto clawed at the man's hand with his bandaged fingers, eyes clenched tightly shut, gasping from breath. Katsuya glared at him, teeth bared and eyes glowing bright scarlet. His pupils had tightened into slits and his skin and hair seemed considerably paler than before; his white teeth were sharper now than they had been before, and his fingernails had stretched into razor-like claws.

"You, pitiful little human," he growled, voice gravelly again and strangled with rage, "will _never_ refer to her with such…such blatant disrespect…so long as I live." He leaned in, narrowed eyes level with Seto's one operable sapphire. "Do I make myself perfectly…completely…and _absolutely_ clear?"

Seto struggled to nod, heart pounding so hard he feared it would burst through his aching ribs at any moment. This had to be the single stupidest thing he had ever done in his life—making a contract with a Vampire to save himself, only to be killed by her brother. It was pathetic, and Seto felt a wave of humiliation surge over his psyche. How could he ever expect to ever locate and rescue Mokuba if he was so easily bested by a guard who couldn't even use proper Japanese?

Katsuya's grip over the young man's mouth loosened. "Now, then, tell me what you're gonna call my sister."

"Shizu—" The Vampire growled, the glow in his eyes intensifying, and Seto swallowed heavily. "M-Mistress," he replied. "Mistress."

Katsuya's eyes dimmed and his claws retracted, skin and hair darkening to their initial shades as his teeth dulled back to their usual inhuman sharpness. He dropped Seto to the ground, where the young man's knees gave out underneath him, and turned away. "Good," he said sternly. "Now come on, we have to hurry."

Seto coughed for several seconds, tasting blood in his mouth and swallowing it instantly, not wanting Katsuya to smell it. It was pointless, though, because a moment later the hunter himself could smell blood, and he realized that the wounds on his chest had reopened. The bandage there felt wet underneath his black turtleneck, and he prayed it wouldn't soak through the shirt as well.

* * *

Shizuka took a deep breath as the pressure over her mouth abated, and coughed heavily. She ground her teeth as the blessed air tore through her lungs; she wouldn't have died—at least not permanently—but not being able to breathe was certainly uncomfortable.

She wondered what had happened as she reached up to massage her cheek—the marks were gone, whatever had caused them hadn't even drawn blood. The wound on her wrist still burned, and she looked down to survey it thoughtfully. Could it be…?

* * *

Seto reclaimed control of his lungs and rose shakily to his feet. If his legs had been protesting his movement as they headed across the courtyard, they were screaming against it now. He winced as he took another step, bit down the pain and stood straight.

Katsuya was watching him from several feet ahead, eyes still narrowed and features etched clearly with his disgust. Seto, upon regaining his composure, cocked his head to one side and gave the man a self-satisfied smirk. He was still alive, regardless of this Vampire's spite. He was most certainly going to throw that fact back in the blond's face.

* * *

Up ahead, Katsuya clenched both hands into fists. He had actually lost control, and with his sister's contracted servant. It was as bad as actually striking her when he struck this idiot human—she had doubtless felt some sort of rebound. The young man ground his teeth and bowed his head as he started forward again.

_I'm sorry, Sis,_ he thought. _So sorry…it won't happen again._

He hoped she heard him, but knew it was in vain. He had never had the same link with his sister as the others, Ryou inparticular. In spite of the fact that Shizuka had forged the link decades ago, and regardless of their relation, Katsuya found himself incapable of sending his thoughts along the fine thread that bound them. He sighed and shook his head, glancing back to make sure the human was following, and together they continued down the hall.

* * *

The journey they had taken from the infirmary to this door, Seto realized, had been a straight shot. Looking back the way they had come, the young hunter could see all the way down the hall to the open doors, across the courtyard to the still-open doors of the South Wing, even the single line of rosy brown that must have been the door to the infirmary. Clever architecture—no need to make any turns, specially designed for patients heading from treatment to the owner of the estate.

Even as he watched, however, that distant line diminished and was lost to sight—the infirmary door closed. Seto jerked as the double doors in that far wing swung shut as well, then the final double doors. _How…?_ He thought, stunned. _Are the doors mechanized?_

Katsuya elbowed his ward roughly in the ribs—Seto was unable to bite back the cry of pain that erupted from the contact. The guard winced in time with the hunter, and pulled back immediately, as though he actually felt some remorse for hurting the younger man. Seto was confused by this, but knew better than to inquire about the Vampire's sudden change of attitude.

"Stand in front of me," the guard commanded. Katsuya removed his green trenchcoat and held it up with one hand, folding it expertly and throwing it over his arms so it draped down in the perfect center of his form. He narrowed his eyes and took a step back. "I said step in front of me." The hunter, not wanting to appear weak but likewise not wanting to be hit again, waited a moment before he took a step to his right, situating himself a step in front of the guard, and glanced back over his shoulder with his good eye. Katsuya appeared not to notice, and instead he took a long stride forward, bumping into his ward's back in a silent urge to step forward. Seto did so, hesitating again in defiance, and to his surprise the rosewood door swung open, seemingly of its own accord.

"Oh, good, you made it across the lawn!" cheered a voice from within. Ryou leaned out, smiling brightly, and Seto froze instantly in place. He couldn't help shooting a furtive glance toward the now-closed doors at the end of the hall, wondering how the pale-haired young man could possibly have reached this room before he and Katsuya. After all, when he turned to look back before stepping out the door Arken had still been leaning nonchalantly against the wall, and that couldn't have been more than ten minutes ago.

Ryou's hands, fingers curled around the edge of the door, slipped down slightly. "Well, aren't you coming in?"

"Give him a minute," Arken said dryly, pulling open the other door. "He's obviously shell-shocked." He cast his deep blue eyes on the hunter and smirked, giving a quiet chuckle. No, Arken didn't chuckle, Seto realized, he _cackled_. Like some sort of evil villain from an old Japanese cartoon.

Seto jerked back upon noticing the lankier of the snowy-haired duo, and looked between them with confusion. _This is…odd,_ he thought, unable to find a word better suited to such a situation. He doubted, for some reason, that such a term existed. The young hunter closed his eyes, wincing when his bandaged eyelid screamed in pain, and took a deep breath before lifting his head once more and striding determinedly into the room beyond. Katsuya followed, exactly a step behind.

Ryou and Arken closed the doors behind them, moving in perfect time, and then turning in a mirror-image of the other to stand with their backs pressed to the red wood. They crossed their arms behind them and kept their gazes fixed on a point in the distance exactly at eye level.

As Seto walked in, he found himself in a small with walls covered in red velvet. He didn't dare examine the place too closely, not with Katsuya urging him silently to continue forward, but he supposed it was some sort of antechamber. At the end of the scarlet room, with their backs pressed to another set of rosewood doors—_Why are there so many double-doors in this place?_—stood two young men that Seto had not seen before. They both wore the same clothing as Katsuya, a tight black turtleneck and slacks, black boots to the middle of the calf and gloves to match, with a short series of black belts around their upper arms. The one on the left had a deep red trenchcoat throw over his left arm, and the one on the right had a pale brown one thrown over his right. Like a mirror, opposite but identical.

The young man on the right looked Seto up and down, brown eyes narrowing in something much deeper than anger—this brown-haired guard felt nothing short of _loathing_ for the hunter. When his eyes landed on Seto's bare feet he turned to Katsuya. "No shoes?" he inquired of the guard.

"Hey, he's Japanese," said the other unnamed guard, smiling as he lifted his head at last, "cut him some slack." When his smile faded and he opened his eyes, Seto was shocked to find them an intense shade of emerald green. The tilt of those eyes spoke of a Japanese heritage, as did the hue of his skin and the depth of his long black hair, but the color was impossible. The young man cocked his head ever so slightly to one side, the long earring he wore on his left ear letting out a high pitched ring with the motion, and his brow furrowed slightly. "Japanese for sure. Nice eyes, by the way."

Seto resisted the urge to strike the young man then and there. Both his parents had been Japanese, neither of them with even a hint of foreign blood a far back as they could trace, and yet both of their children bore eyes that no Asian child could possibly have—Seto's were the color of sapphires, Mokuba's like the night sky. Back when he had been in school he had dealt with enough teasing over his eyes, he really didn't want to go through any such trials again.

But the young man with the red coat said nothing more, instead reaching over with his right hand, bending down slightly, to take hold of the golden door handle. The brown-haired guard with hatred in his eyes did the same, motions perfectly synchronized with his comrade, and they opened the double doors.

Katsuya took a step forward and Seto realized that this was a ceremony of some sort, something that had been rehearsed and choreographed until everything was in proper order. Discovering this made his stomach lurch, and he stumbled to take his proper place a step ahead of Katsuya.

In the room beyond the antechamber, there was a desk made of the same reddish wood as the doors; in either far corner of the room stood small tables of the same material, one of which held small star-shaped objects that Seto recognized as children's candy, the other bearing a tall wooden box that reminded the hunter distinctly of an _obento_ box lunch. The bandaged young man strode in, trying to keep his breathing steady as he stared at the young woman sitting at the desk; her amber eyes remained locked with his sapphire, elbows resting on the desk and fingers steepled.

She was dressed quite differently than she had been when he encountered her on the street. Replacing her sleeveless black turtleneck she now wore a button-up white shirt with airy, loose sleeves that tightened around her wrists. Her hair had been brushed carefully into place, long bangs falling to either side of her face in perfect symmetry; just under one of those auburn lengths, however, Seto noticed a faint discoloration on her cheek. Since when did Vampires bruise?

Katsuya stopped, quite suddenly, and Seto hastened to do so as well. This left his left foot a half-step ahead of his right, a clear breach in whatever ceremony he was taking part in. He clenched his hands into fists, heartbeat quickening again, and surreptitiously pulled his left foot back until it was even with his right.

* * *

Behind him, Katsuya was unsure whether to be impressed or infuriated—the hunter had actually figured out that he was taking part in a ritual, and was doing his best to follow the proper motions. _Smart kid,_ the guard thought, arms still folding and holding his trenchcoat, though at that moment he longed to wrap his hands around the sapphire-eyed young man's neck. Smart humans tended to last far too long for his liking.

* * *

Shizuka cast her eyes from Seto to Katsuya and gave a silent nod. The guard bowed low and backed out the doors, which closed as he turned his back on the room and rose to his full height. Thus, Shizuka and her contracted servant were alone in her office.

"Come forward, Kaiba Seto," the young woman commanded, bracing her slender fingers against the desk and rising from her seat. Seto took a deep breath and did as he was told. He had to remind himself time and again that this woman was a vampire, that regardless of the oh-so-alive flush in her cheeks and the glimmer of a living soul behind her eyes, she was a monster. She had drank his blood, hadn't she? So why was he having so much trouble keeping focused on the thought that she was evil?

She took a deep breath, closing her eyes. "The bond that was forged shall hereby be broken, threads of fire and blood shall be extinguished and returned to the heart from which they were taken." Shizuka let out the breath she had been holding and looked up at the hunter. "The ties that bound us together are hereby severed, cut by the hand that wove them, torn by the same strength that…" She swallowed thickly, blinking as though trying to fight off tears. "T-Torn by the same strength that would have held them together…from the moment of sworn servitude to the end of time."

She held out both hands and Seto held out his wounded hand, not quite sure why. She took hold of his long-fingered hand in her own, much-smaller grip and carefully unwound the bands around his wrist. He realized that they were both shaking, the slightest hint of a shudder turning a steady grip into a tenuous one. Baring the twin wounds in the pale skin where his hand met his arm, the girl's eyes narrowed for a fraction of a second in what could only be a wince.

Seto's own eyes narrowed in confusion. She looked almost…sympathetic. Even _apologetic_. It made no sense, she did this regularly, didn't she? She had to drink blood to survive, probably every night, so why did she seem so sorrowful over having drank his? Was it because she had made him her servant, linked them together when she obviously didn't want such a bond?

The girl took a deep breath and leaned down, hair falling forward to obscure her features, and pressed her lips to the two aching marks on the hunter's wrist. Seto ground his teeth as the pain in those miniscule wounds escalated from a dull ache to searing agony, fire lancing through the veins of his arm and hands. Shizuka held his hand and arm tightly, keeping his wrist pressed to her mouth regardless of how he thrashed; her grip tensed, however, when the first scream tore free from the young man's throat.

**

* * *

Author's Note: Longer than chapter one. Sorry about that, and about any confusion caused by the description of Shizuka's estate. It was supposed to be vague because Kaiba-kun is kind of confused and still suffering from major blood loss, so he can't quite click together this and that. In any case, the compound is huge. Even bigger than it looks.**

I know Anzu seemed out-of-character, I can assure you that it's intentional. There was a bit of an explanation in Ryou's dream/flashback, but it will be further explained as the story progresses. As for the character named Ribbon that Shizuka mentioned to Hiroto, if any of you have read the manga you should be able to remember the girl Honda had a major crush on and made that puzzle for. Yep, that's her. Also, in the original Toei animated series (the one where Kaiba had green hair and Shizuka's eyes were red) she was the girl that glomped Kaiba all the time. I really wanted her to die back then…but that rage has passed. (cue relieved sigh.)


	3. The Guilt of Remembrance

**Warning:** This chapter contains violence, not exceptionally graphic but more detailed than there has been thus far, including a detailed account of child abuse. Consider yourself warned. None of it is anything you wouldn't see in a PG-13 movie these days, though.

This chapter also has some new characters, in mention only. Nonetheless, I felt it necessary to list their name comparisons just to keep from getting too confusing.

**Original Name (Dub Name)**

Mutou Yugi (Yugi Moto)

Atem (Yami Yugi, this is his original Pharaoh name)

Isis Ishtar (Ishizu Ishtar)

Rashid (Odion)

Malik Ishtar (Marik Ishtar. I hate this Americanisation. It gives me crawlies.)

Pegasus J. Crawford (Maximillion Pegasus)

* * *

**

* * *

Chapter Three: The Guilt of Remembrance**

Katsuya turned when a loud cry cut through the steady murmur of conversation. The scream broke off, only to continue again a breath later. He sighed and shook his head. "That's what he gets," he grinned, turning back to his comrades. "Stupid human."

"Hey, it's not like it's his fault," asserted the green-eyed young guard to his right. "He didn't ask to become her contracted servant or anything—he probably doesn't even know what it means."

"Oh-ho," chimed Arken from his place leaning against the exit door beside Ryou. "Do I detect a human-sympathizer in our midst, Ryuuji?"

The black-haired guard shook his head, waving off the accusation with one tanned hand. "Nah, nothing like that," he said easily. He narrowed his eyes slightly. "It's just…" He turned his emerald eyes on the closed doors and gave a melancholy grin. "…He's just like me."

Hiroto stifled a growl. "He is _nothing_ like any of us," he hissed, voice a gravelly rasp. His narrowed eyes flashed scarlet as emotion surged through his psyche, and he clenched his hands into fists so tight his claws dug into the flesh of his palms. "He's a filthy, disgusting, idiotic human who spends his time killing us for sport."

Katsuya placed a hand on his friend's shoulder. "Hey, Hiroto, are you all right?"

The brunette batted away the offered hand and turned his back to his comrades. "I'm fine," he assured them darkly. "But I'll be a lot better when all this if over and that bastard is gone for good. We'll all be better."

Ryou sighed, lowering his head. "I wonder if that's true," he murmured.

* * *

The agony in his arm reached a crescendo and Seto's vision went momentarily white with pain. His voice broke and the scream caught in his throat as his lungs finally emptied; the hunter jerked back and his wrist tore free of Shizuka's hands.

He looked down at her with wide eyes—even the one he couldn't see through, the one that was still covered by a bloody patch and bands of gauze, went inexplicably wide. He gasped for breath, skin soaked with sweat, and as coherent thought returned he found that the girl was staring at him with eyes that were just as wide. She stared with obvious confusion and slightly-veiled fear, mouth open ever so slightly, just enough to give a flash of white teeth when she inhaled.

"I-It didn't—" She took hold of his wrist and kissed it again. This time there was no pain, no lances of fire running through his bones, nothing.

Seto blinked as the woman tried once more and then, defeated, let both his hand and her own drop. "Is that it?" he inquired, looking down at his wrist. The wound was still there, two small gashes angry red. He didn't feel any different.

Shizuka sunk down in her chair, eyes distant and expression bordering on frantic. "No," she whispered in reply. "Breaking a contract causes a physical break as well, a bone should have snapped." She shook her head, looking down at her wrist. She pulled away the fabric of her sleeve and Seto was shocked to see on her own porcelain skin wounds matching those he bore. "It didn't work, it didn't break." Her brow furrowed. "Maybe this is part of our terms and conditions. Maybe this is a requirement."

"Terms and what?" he inquired, arching one eyebrow in no little confusion. What she had said was beginning to sink in at last—the contract wasn't broken, meaning he was still as good as her slave. Under normal circumstances he would have attacked the young woman, but a flash of female screams through his memory held him back. It didn't make sense for her not to be able to break that contract, unless she was doing this on purpose.

Seto gave her another glance and decided that this had not been her intention; the fear and surprise in her eyes were too genuine, the shaking of her fingers as she held them to the aching wound on her wrist too real. She didn't know what was happening any more than he did.

Shizuka took a deep breath, closing her eyes and holding her hand to her head. "Please leave for now," she said. "Go back to the infirmary and recover; I'll summon you again when you're well. At that time we will try again."

The hunter nodded weakly, turning to walk out in a daze. He was a Vampire's servant and not even the Vampire knew how to fix it. He was trapped, trapped as he had never been before, this time by bonds of his own creation. He had agreed to this, he had done this by his own choice. Now he wasn't permitted to turn his back on that decision.

He opened one door and stepped out, eyes downcast. The quiet hum of conversation died instantly, and he felt all eyes rooted on him. The man with green eyes was the first to speak. "Hey, are you sure you should be wal—" he broke off, looking the hunter up and down. He stared in silence for a long moment. "You…You don't have any broken bones."

"What?" that was Katsuya, stepping forward and shoving his comrade aside to examine the hunter himself. His brown eyes widened when he realized the black-haired young man was right.

Seto lifted his eyes at last and shrugged. "No, I don't," he replied simply, his voice unreadable.

The head guard took a shaky breath. "But—"

"It didn't work," the hunter explained. "It just…didn't work."

With that he continued on his way, walking past the three trenchcoat-wearing figures to reach the door. He heard a low growl from one of them—the voice was one he barely recognized, meaning it was probably the brown-haired Vampire displaying such rage.

Seto was barely a meter from the door now, and reached out so he would be able to open it the minute he was in reach. A voice behind him hollered, "Hiroto, _no_!" and Seto found himself slammed to the floor by strong, claw-tipped hands.

* * *

Ryuuji and Katsuya turned to Hiroto as the growl deep in the back of his throat intensified, his eyes glowing bright scarlet as he ground his inhumanly sharp teeth. The man in the brown trenchcoat curled his clawed hands into fists and bent his legs at the knees, as though tensing for a jump. "Sully Shizuka-_dono_, will you?" he hissed. "Taint her with your filthy blood…"

"Hiroto?"

"Well I'll taint you with your own filth!" The young man leapt up, surging forward in an obvious attempt to tackle the retreating hunter.

"Hiroto, _no_!" screamed Katsuya.

But it was too late—the brown-haired vampire was on the young man in an instant, claws digging deep into flesh, ripping bandages and clothes to shreds with a single swipe of his razor-tipped hands. Beneath him, the hunter struggled to move, to pull away, to defend himself, but in such a wounded state already there was nothing he could do.

Ryuuji and Katsuya rushed forward, trying to pull the guard off the human, but to no avail. He continued to avoid their hands and tear free when they at last found hold of his thrashing form. "You filthy, bastard of a human! How dare you even _touch_ her!" he roared, voice so deep it could never possibly be called human. His claws dug so deep into his flesh his fingers were buried up to the first joint, scraping bones and tearing muscle with each move. "How dare you hurt her! How dare you—how dare you—how _dare _you!"

Katsuya jerked backward as Hiroto hit him in the face, the blow so hard it sent him sprawled out on the floor; the bronze-haired Vampire reached up to wipe away the fine trail of blood running down from his lip and ground his teeth. He took a deep breath, threw back his head and yelled. "Arken! Ryou!"

So suddenly no one could be sure where they had come from, the two white-haired young man appeared on either side of the berserk Hiroto. Ryou let out a cry and reached out, slender hands taking instant hold on the Vampire's arm, as Arken did the same on his other side. They moved in unison, pulling the bloodstained brunette off the gasping hunter and dropping him on the floor.

Arken glared down at the man, eyes burning bright blue with rage. Ryou, too, looked down with narrowed eyes that glowed from within, still brown nevertheless. "Idiot!" Arken growled. Ryou completed the admonition. "Do you realize what you've done!"

Hiroto looked between the two impossibly strong men and shook his head. "I-I was just…I couldn't…" he sighed and cast his brown eyes downward. "I couldn't hold back…"

Ryou slanted the head guard a look. "Katsuya-_san_," he said softly, his voice filled to the brim with constrained rage, "go check on the Mistress."

Katsuya's eyes widened and he shot to his feet. This couldn't be happening, the contract could have settled, she could be all right—

He threw open the door and found his sister, sitting in her chair, staring down at her hands. Her wide eyes were filled with tears, but those twin trails of blood looked minute in comparison to the gashes and lacerations that ran up the length of her body. Her white shirt was soaked and clung to her body like a second skin, this one crimson and reeking of Vampire blood.

"_N-Nii-san_…" she squeaked, turning her amber eyes from her hands to him in complete confusion. She struggled to rise from her chair, but the motion caused her to grind her teeth and bite back a cry of pain. Jounouchi Shizuka collapsed forward onto her desk.

* * *

Seto struggled to rise, to push himself up, but the only answer his body gave to his inquiry as to whether he could move was screaming pain that ran up his entire figure. He clenched his eyes shut and choked back a scream, automatically rolling onto his side and curling up into a ball.

_Human reflexes are amazing,_ he thought. _They aren't fast enough or strong enough to fight off a monster that I know is right behind me, but they're programmed to make me look like an infant when I'm in pain. Wonderful._

"You shouldn't try to move," came a soft voice to his left. His opened his single usable eye and struggled to see; the faint flash of white and black that obscured his vision proved that it was most likely Arken. The young hunter let out a sigh of relief as the white-haired warrior reached down to brush his bloodied hair back from his face—Arken had helped care for him before, there was no reason to be afraid of him. "Come on kid," the man said, the distinct sound of a smile in his voice, layered with an unnamable form of sorrow. "We'd better get you back to the infirmary."

Seto found himself lifted up, one of Arken's arms hooked under his legs and the other around his shoulders. "Ryou," called the lankier young man, "you take the Princess." The steady rhythm that followed this command, bumping Seto up and down, was most certainly the man walking, but Seto never felt the cold bite of outside air. Not even after what seemed like a short eternity and Arken laid him down in a bed, placing a hand on his head and whispering a short series of words that commanded him to sleep.

The young hunter did.

* * *

Ryou stepped out from behind the curtain with his eyes closed, exhaustion etched clearly into his features. He was wiping off his scarlet stained hands on a piece of white cloth, turning the alabaster to garnet. He gave a smile in the direction of the gathered group—Arken, sitting at the hunter's bedside, Katsuya, Ryuuji, Mazaki and the young Rebecca. "She's going to be all right," he assured them with a smile. "She's lost a lot of blood, but that's nothing a couple good drinks won't fix." He turned his eyes on his other charge, and cast a questioning look at Arken.

"Oh, he's going to be fine," he said easily. "The wounds were easy to clean and easier to dress—Princess took the brunt of it, anyway. By morning all he'll have is bruises." He grinned broadly, but the darkness in his eyes proved that he still held a great concern. Ryou, being who and what he was, understood immediately and stepped to one side, gesturing for his partner to go see the young Vampire woman.

Arken practically jumped to his feet and rushed past his slightly-smaller companion. Out of everyone on the estate, no one worried more about Shizuka than Arken and Katsuya, but Ryou couldn't permit the guard to see his sister just yet.

"Hiroto-_san_?" he queried of the head guard.

Katsuya cast his brown eyes downward and shook his head. "Back in his room," he replied. "Ryuuji's taking care of him now."

Ryou nodded in understanding. "And who's next?"

"Me, then Arken, then you. Rebecca said she'll go last, but she wants a turn too."

"Don't forget me," Mazaki warned. Her blue eyes glowed dangerously—she was clearly more than just upset by this recent turn of events. "As soon as you're done, Ryou, that jerk is mine. I don't care if he went berserk—he caused that much pain to Shizuka-_chan_ and he's sure as hell going to pay for it."

Rebecca sighed. "He sure is. Even Rafael and Valon are going to want a piece of this one." She narrowed his eyes. "Heck, maybe I should send a letter to Lord Pegasus and Lady Cecilia so they can come have a go at it, too."

Ryou actually chuckled at that. "Well, as interesting as that sounds, I think it's time we got to bed; I do have an errand for you, though, Rebecca-_chan_." He turned to Mazaki, then Katsuya. "You two can see her, but I think we should all be in bed pretty soon—it's almost six o'clock."

The guard and the messenger nodded, and the rest of the group filed out. Katsuya waited, but Mazaki gestured for him to go first. "You're family," she said with a smile. "You should talk to her."

He gave a grateful smile and stepped past the curtain just as Arken brushed past. The white-haired man took hold of the guard's arm and held him immobile just long enough to whisper into his ear. "She's pretty roughed up, Katsuya. Don't overreact."

The blond nodded and Arken released, walking past Mazaki with a smile as Katsuya took a seat past the curtain at his sister's bedside.

Arken was right—she was pretty roughed up. Her face, her arms, her neck; everything was covered in bandages. What hurt the young man the most, however, were the bands Ryou had placed around her eyes. Katsuya knew it was only to make sure she didn't come in contact with any bright light that could disturb her sleep, but it was unsettling nonetheless.

The young man sighed deeply. "Hey _Nee-san_," he said quietly. "Listen, Hiroto's in trouble for what he did, you can finish off the punishment whenever you wake up…" He swallowed thickly, his mouth dry. "I don't think I can handle this, _Nee-san_. Seein' you like this…it's like Ryuzaki all over again. I hate it. And it's all because o' some stupid human you were forced t' make a contract with. If he'd never've showed up, you'd be all right. Hiroto wouldn't o' been such an idiot."

He lowered his eyes, heaving another sigh. "But then, if he'd never've showed up, then those _rônin_ would've taken you away, huh? Then you wouldn't be here with us anymore at all, wounded or not." He shook his head. "He saved you, I know that, but I'm still not happy t' have him here. When you wake up, _Nee-san_, could you tell me why the contract didn't break? Could you tell me why he's still here, sleepin' in the bed next t' yours? Why you chose someone that put you in a hospital bed again, after we thought you'd never have to after your surgery?"

Katsuya blinked and raked a gloved hand across his stinging eyes. "Dammit, Shizuka. You could've chosen one of us. We've stood by you through everything, contracted or not. I know, findin' him was _hitsuzen_, some sort o' preordained destiny. But what kind of destiny forces you to take in a perfect stranger? A _hunter_ that's been killin' our kind for fun?" She shook his head. "I just don't get it, _Nee-san_. I don't get it at all."

* * *

"It's so bright out that I have to send a human, but Ribbon and Mana won't be up for another hour or so," Ryou explained carefully. He gave the little girl a slip of white paper and a black card with a number and name clearly printed on it in gold, and she surveyed them thoughtfully as he explained what to do. "You have your Jounouchi Estate certification card, right?"

She nodded, fishing through her pocket until she produced the white card. White, meaning she was human. The Vampires all had black ones, with varying color text to denote their rank, while Arken and Ryou both hand cards of grey—Ryou's with white print, Arken's with black. "All right, you need to show that to the woman at the desk, then the black card I just gave you, then ask for what I wrote for you here." He touched the paper again.

"Two pints, fresh, AB negative," she read aloud.

Ryou nodded, standing straight once more. "Now before you remind me that Shizuka-_dono_ doesn't like drinking human blood, I know. However, the fact remains that her recovery will be excruciatingly long if she continues to sustain herself on deer blood, and she cannot afford that—not with what's happening in the world right now."

Rebecca nodded, reaching up to push up her glasses when they slipped. "All right. When I get back do you want me to have Mana heat it up?"

Ryou shook his head. "When Arken gets up at four he'll do it." He smiled weakly, baring teeth. "Mana tends to burn things."

The blond nodded in understanding, then turned toward the door. "I'll be back as soon as I can," she said. With that she hurried off, opening the door just a crack—not enough to let any of the pale sunlight leak in—and slipped out. Ryou let out a relieved sigh as the door clicked shut behind her.

* * *

"Just like old times, huh Shizuka-_chan_?" Mazaki Anzu said softly, leaning her elbows on the girl's bed. "Except last time it was just your eyes that were bandaged, this time it's everything." She closed her blue eyes and shook her head. "I'm really sorry about what Honda-_kun_ did to you, Shizuka-_chan_. I still can't believe he went berserk like that."

Mazaki hadn't seen the handiwork of a berserker in a long time; not in over a decade. Looking at Shizuka now, in the same state her contracted servant had been after the attack from Haga, made the girl's eyes sting and her heartbeat quicken all over again. It had been bad enough to lose Ryuzaki, now she could lose Shizuka, too. Both her best friends, lost forever because of some idiot Vampire's rage.

"I can't believe anyone who would willingly choose this life," she muttered, raking a long-fingered hand through her deep brown hair. "I just don't understand why we keep doing this."

"B-Because," came a raspy voice. Mazaki started and looked at the young Vampire as she reached up to her face and tugged away the bands over her eyes. "Because we're Vampires, Anzu-_chan_. Without our servants, we're alone."

Mazaki shook her head, blue eyes stained red with tears. "You were never alone, Shizuka-_chan_. We've all always been here for you."

Shizuka let out a weak breath. "You were alone," she replied. "You're more alone now that Ryuzaki's gone than you were before you found him."

"Maybe."

"You are," Shizuka asserted, closing her amber eyes once more and settling in for further sleep. "And now that I know what it feels like to have someone like that, I can see that I used to be alone, too. "

Mazaki placed a hand over the girl's eyes. "You," she said simply, "will never be alone." She sighed. "Go back to sleep, Shizuka-_chan_."

The wounded Vampire did.

* * *

_The woman shakes her head slowly, then with growing vehemence as the words of the man in the white coat sink in. "But…but she's only a child! Barely twelve years old!"_

_The man sighs and lowers his head apologetically. "I'm sorry, ma'am, but the test results clearly state that your daughter—"_

"_How long does she have?" the woman inquires darkly, raking a hand through her short blond hair. The man is silent for a long moment. "Doctor?"_

_He sighs again. "With this kind of condition it's hard to tell. It could be a year, six years, or six months. She's fading fast, Miss Jounouchi—I'd guess she'll be completely blind by the time she's fifteen."_

_That seems to shake the woman even more, and she casts tear-filled eyes on the girl lying in the bed beside her. The girl's auburn hair has been cut short just for this visit—it was in the way at the last examination, and both the woman and her daughter decided it would just be easier to cut it for next time. It would grow back._

"_Is there anything we can do?" she asks softly, brown eyes rooted on her child. "Any medication she can take?"_

_The doctor shakes his head and looks at the girl as well. "I'm afraid not, Miss Jounouchi." He is sadden by the girl's short hair—he remembers last time she came, when it fell in silky locks to her tailbone. She has sacrificed it only to find out there is nothing to be done. Nothing that's certain, in any case. "The only thing we could do would be surgery, and even that is rarely used. The method is still relatively unproven, there's no telling if it would work or not."_

_The woman swallows heavily. "How much?" she asks._

"_Miss Jounouchi?" He knows her annual income, and that most of that is poured into the amber bottles her husbands finds solace in. There is no way she can afford this procedure without doing something drastic and foolish. From the look in her eyes, she knows this as well._

"_How much does that surgery cost, doctor?"_

_He sighs and leans forward, whispering in her ear. He has noticed that the little girl, supposedly asleep on her hospital bed, is shaking slightly. She is awake, and she has heard every word. She, like her mother, knows that there is nothing they can do.

* * *

_

"Two pints, fresh, AB negative," Rebecca recited carefully. "Two pints, fresh, AB negative. Two pints, fresh, AB negative. Two pints, fresh, AB negative."

She didn't seem to notice the odd looks sent in her direction as she trotted down the street, either that or she just didn't care. It was seven now, the time when Ribbon and Mana and the other maids woke up, and Rebecca was already just a corner away from her destination. She smiled proudly—she had never been sent on an errand like this before. Arken once tried to send her to go get some beer, but Ryou had stopped that nonsense almost before his partner had finished speaking. The girl had been sorely disappointed, until she recalled that Arken didn't drink. Then she was just curious as to what he was going to use the beer for.

Her booted feet tapped as she walked, reading the slip of paper Ryou had given her over and over and over aloud, just to be sure she would be able to say it properly to the woman at the desk. Rebecca had never been good with humans; Vampires were much easier to deal with, at least you could count on them to be dishonest. With humans you could never be sure.

The petite blood looked up at the tall black building towering over her and a sound of awe escaped her lips. She had never been to the blood bank before—Rafael's bar, yes, but never the bank. The bar only served animal blood, the bank dealt in human fluid—she had been told it was completely different, but being human she couldn't be sure.

Bracing both hands against one of the glass doors, Rebecca opened the portal and stepped in. The inside was flat and smooth, the floor and walls covered with sleek black tiles that reflected her face wherever she looked. "Amazing," she murmured.

"Are you lost, little girl?"

Rebecca flinched at the title—she was small for her age, she knew that, but that didn't mean she appreciated being treated like a toddler. She looked down from the walls and saw a black desk at the end of the room; as she trotted up to it she pulled out the card Ryou had given her, her certification card and her identification. "No, I'm here to make a withdrawal," she said easily.

The woman behind the desk—a human with bright red hair pulled back in a dangerously tight bun—arched one eyebrow at the maturity in the child's voice. Rebecca held out all three cards and the woman surveyed them carefully.

She turned to the computer and keyed in the number from the black card. "Jounouchi Shizuka," she read aloud. "High Level Vampire, owner of the Jounouchi Estate…" She narrowed her eyes and turned to Rebecca. "You work with Miss Jounouchi?"

Rebecca nodded. "I'm her administrative assistant," she said easily. That was her technical title, but Rebecca more often found herself working under Ryuuji or Ryou.

The woman picked up Rebecca's card and her ID, reading them carefully. "It says here your legal guardian is Otogi Ryuuji," she declared. "If he's your guardian, why do you work for Miss Jounouchi?"

The girl was getting annoyed now. She pushed up her glasses and set her jaw, trying to find some way to explain the relationships on the estate. The green-eyed vampire was technically her legal guardian, he had been the one to rescue her when the Vampires attacked her home and she bore his mark on the back of her neck. Her grandfather was her blood relative, but if a human child was recovered by Vampires any claim a blood relation had to the youth was severed.

"Ryuuji-_san _is a guard on the estate," she explained carefully. "He works under her older brother and I work under her—gender-separated roles. There aren't many females on the estate, so any that do show up end up working directly with Shizuka-_dono_." She blinked and stifled and exasperated sigh—she had said _females_ instead of _women_, a distinctly Vampiristic error. She wondered if any of the maids had the same problem.

The woman behind the desk noticed the girl's manner of speech, for she recoiled slightly and fell silent as she scoured the records. Children raised by Vampires were said to be cursed, some were even rumored to take part in their guardian's drinking habits; Rebecca, of course, knew better, but this woman clearly did not. The girl sighed. "Listen, I just need two pints, fresh, AB negative. That's it."

"That's awfully rare," the woman said quietly, looking back at the young girl. "What does your mistress need it for?"

"If you continue to pry into life on the Jounouchi Estate," Rebecca said carefully, as though reciting from a book, "you will be in violation of article 342-c of the Japan-Vampire treaty, stating that the life and affairs of any Vampire without a criminal record shall remain private business until such time as the Vampire in question decides to make that business public, or criminal behavior is recorded." She smirked, sweeping a length of golden hair over her shoulder. "Shizuka-_dono_ is very private and has a spotless record."

That was her trump card—Shizuka had made Rebecca commit the Japan-Vampire treaty to memory, in its entirety, just for occasions such as this. It was also helpful when trying to turn away unwelcome guests back home, and explaining to the truancy officer why a girl so young as Shizuka's administrative assistant wasn't enrolled in school on the days when she didn't feel like digging up her diploma.

This closed the conversation, and the woman rose to retrieve the requested fluid.

* * *

Shizuka was dreaming. Ryou could tell, watching her shift around in her bed, faint moans escaping her lips periodically. Her face was contorted in pain and her teeth ground so hard Ryou could hear their gnashing. He had to do something, and he had to do it fast—Shizuka had never dealt well with nightmares.

As the white-haired young man took a step toward her bed, a faint whimper sounded from the bed behind him. He turned to find the hunter, Kaiba Seto, wearing an expression matching his Mistress' and tossing about in his bed with the same inhibited motions; they both moved as though they wanted to thrash, but were too afraid to move more than a centimeter or so at a time. Their motions weren't synchronized, but Ryou was positive that they were seeing the same sleeping vision. Calming one would calm the other, or so he hoped.

Ryou came to his Mistress' bedside and placed a hand on her forehead, running gentle fingers through her hair and whispering as quietly as he could. "Shh, shh, it's all right. It's just a dream. You're all right…"

The girl jerked away and a louder cry tore free from her throat, this one in time with a groan from young Seto's bed. "_O-Otou—_" she whimpered, tears forming in the corners of her eyes, scarlet spilling down onto her white pillow.

"_Otou-sama…_!" That was Seto, his voice a raspy shout, torn from his lips as though by a physical force.

Ryou blinked, brow furrowing. "Father?" he echoed, looking between the two wounded figures. He remembered the scars and discoloration on the young man's chest and ribs, and wondered if he was the source of this nightmare. If so, then that would explain why he hadn't been able to calm Shizuka—she was seeing through his eyes, feeling through his skin, and she didn't know it was just a dream. How could she know? But then, Seto couldn't be certain either, in the state of dreaming, that what he was seeing was not, in fact, reality.

The white-haired man sighed and lowered his nearly-black eyes. "Arken," he murmured. Immediately the taller figure appeared beside him, looking between the two figures in confusion. Arken whistled appreciatively. "Wow, looks a like a party." He looked at his companion. "Whose house?"

"The hunter."

Arken came up beside the chestnut-haired young man and bent down over him. "Is poor Seto having a nightmare?" he whispered. He reached out and placed a pale hand on the young man's brow. "It's just a dream, you know. Do you want to wake up?"

Seto rolled onto his side, as though he had been shoved into position. He let out a cough. "_O-Otou-sama_!" he whimpered. "Please—" he broke off with a gasp, jerking roughly. Arken knelt down on the bed beside the young man, placing a hand on either of his shoulders and pulling him back to proper position.

"It's just a dream, Seto!" he shouted. "Wake up!"

* * *

_The boy convulses as another kick rams into his stomach, rolling him across the floor until he's laying on his side, his back to the man from which that kick came. The man is tall and muscular, with hair that is cropped short and is just beginning to show a hint of grey—it's always been like that, though, a single spray of grey through the brown, just enough to make him look like an adult but not enough to make him look old. _

_The boy has hair a shade lighter than the man's, currently streaked not with grey but with scarlet, blood from a blow to his head trailing through his chestnut mane. His eyes are the same as his father's as well, the most intense shade of blue the world has ever seen, like light cast through sapphires. He is also tall, like his father; though barely nine he stands almost at the man's shoulder._

"_F-Father—"_

_The boy's whimper earns him another sharp kick, this time in his back. It causes pain to flare through his spine and forces him to lay face-down on the tile. There is blood everywhere now, more than the boy has ever seen, and not all of it is his._

_Laying in the corner, propped up with one shoulder against the wall and the other against the cupboard, is a woman. She holds in her arms a tiny figure—a black-haired boy no older than five. The boy is bruised but not bleeding, and he is unconscious. The woman is still, her grey eyes closed, but the sapphire-eyed boy knows that she is not merely sleeping. There is blood everywhere, and it makes the boy sick to his stomach._

_Today the war ended. Today peace was declared between the humans and the creatures of the night. Today was to bring an end to the bloodshed. _

_Thinking of this, the boy lets out a broken laugh, tears of pain and of anger and sorrow stinging in his eyes. An end to bloodshed between the humans and the Vampires, maybe, but not between humans and themselves. This situation is a prime example._

_Just moments ago his mother, the woman in the corner, dragged herself to where he younger son hid and gathered him up into her arms, whispering that everything was going to be all right, that daddy would calm down soon. She sang to the boy, telling him to sleep, promising that when he woke up everything would be all right. The echoes of her lullaby as she rocked the child back and forth still echo through the older boy's mind, and it's enough to make him laugh again._

_The end of the world war, maybe, but his is nowhere near a close. _

_The laugh is misinterpreted, and the tall man kicks the boy in the side. The child tensed for the blow this time, so he is not thrown quite so far. "F-Father, please—"_

_The man bends down and takes hold of the boy's hair, picking him up by his scalp. "Bastard," he spat. "Today was supposed to be a triumph, today we were supposed to win. But instead brats like you gave up, brats like you came up with some damned treaty…" His blue eyes narrow and he throws the boy to the ground. "Clean up your mess," he commands, stomping to the doorway. "I'll be back in an hour."_

_The boy pushes himself up. "…What?"_

"_I said clean up the mess. I'm going to go get something to eat."_

_It is at least midnight now, maybe later. Nothing will be open, no place for the boy's father to eat. He is confused, but does not question his father's words. If the man is going to be gone for an hour, then the boy will use that hour to the best of his ability. There is already a plan forming in the back of his mind, and he bites his bottom lip to keep from shouting in exultation. He is going to escape. He is going to take his little brother and escape._

_As if able to sense the boy's thoughts, the man spins around and kicks the child again. The sapphire-eyed little boy is sent sprawling out on the floor, his mother's blood splashes around him as he slides across the tile and barely bumps into her before he can stop himself._

"_I expect this place clean by the time I get back." With that the man turns and walks out. The boy remains tense until he hears the door close, then hears the car start up in the driveway. He sighs and closes his eyes in relief. His father will never come home to a clean house again, he decides. Whether he's dying or not, he's not going to let his little brother grow up in this sort of pain. _

_The boy tries to sit up, but is forced back down when his mother's arms at last fall limp and his little brother falls from her grasp, landing as dead weight in the boy's midsection. The wind is knocked from his lungs, and everything goes black.

* * *

_

In unison the two wounded figures' eyes snapped open, amber and sapphire. Seto arched his back and gasped for breath, whereas Shizuka's eyes merely went wide, edged with frantic confusion. For the woman the world blurred back into focus and she let out a relieved sigh, sinking into her pillow once more. For the hunter however, it was considerably different. He sat bolt upright in bed, crying out in pain as one of the many wounds on his body protested the sudden movement, and looked around with wide eyes.

Arken reached out and placed a hand affectionately on the young man's head, smiling sympathetically. "It's okay, kid, just go back to sleep. It was just a bad dream."

"B-But Mother—"

"It was just a dream," Arken promised. "I don't know what you saw, but whatever it was it wasn't real." He urged Seto to lay back down and the young man, surprisingly, complied. Whether he really appreciated the help or he was merely to exhausted for defiance Arken didn't know, but he was happy to see the young man let out a sigh and close his unbandaged eye.

Seto breathed deeply for several seconds before opening his eyes and again and staring off into the distance. "It wasn't just a dream though," he said. "It was real, years ago. The war had just ended and father was so angry…he hurt her again, but this time he didn't stop."

Ryou came up from Shizuka's bed, where the young woman had fallen back asleep, and viewed the young man with concern. This didn't seem like him at all, to speak of himself and his dreams—or his past, as he seemed to be saying it was. "Seto-_dono_?"

"He just kept kicking and hitting and I told him to stop and—" his eyes widened and he took a gasping breath, letting it out in a sigh as his eye slid shut. When that sapphire opened again he turned to Arken and Ryou with an unreadable expression, clearly awake at last. They doubted he had been before. "What time is it?" The childish fear that had been lining his voice before was gone now, replaced with neutral maturity.

"Seven-eighteen," Arken said, glancing at the clock on the wall.

Seto's brow furrowed. "Shouldn't you two be in bed? The sun's up by now."

Ryou smiled and gestured around the infirmary. "Blackout curtains," he said amicably. "Not that we need them, but Shizuka-_dono_ does so we have them shut."

* * *

The hunter nodded weakly, eyes drifting shut, then snapping open again as the white-haired man's words sunk in. "Shizuka?" he inquired, sitting up again. "What's wrong with her?"

"You were attacked," Ryou said. "The contract hasn't settled yet, so…" He stepped to one side and gestured to the bed neighboring Seto's. Apparently the curtain had been pulled back, so the hunter could easily see the battered young woman. His eyes widened at the sight of all the bandages and the dark blood staining them, and the memory of his mother, bloody and hiding in the shadows of the kitchen while her husband beat her older son half to death surfaced in his mind. He winced and shook his head, holding a hand to his bandaged right eye as pain lanced behind it.

He looked back up at Ryou and Arken. "Who?" he inquired, deadpan.

"Honda Hiroto," Ryou replied easily. "The guard in brown."

Seto nodded once and then pulled back the blankets, swinging his legs over the side of the bed. Arken and Ryou were on him in an instant, forcing him back down. "Slow down, kid," Arken warned. "He's sleeping right now anyway—it's morning, remember? I understand you want a piece of him but—"

"Get off of me," the young man commanded, eyes narrowing. Seto could deal with the fact that the guard had hurt him, there might even have been hope for some form of forgiveness in a century or two, but no one—_no one_—raised their hand to a woman while Kaiba Seto was around. If one drop of female blood was spilt within a mile of the hunter he would make sure the one responsible paid for it. There was a reason Seto had never hunted females before, after all. To harm a female, regardless of species, screamed against everything Seto Kaiba strove to be. To harm a female was wrong, even evil, and there was no way Seto could stand it. To harm a female was to become his father.

Honda Hiroto had just been marked with same loathing as Kaiba's father.

"You can have a go at him first thing in the night, okay? We'll wake you as soon as the sun sets and—"

"I said," Seto seethed, "let…me…go!" His skin flashed bright white for an instant and he threw the two young men off. Ryou slammed against the side of Shizuka's bed and Arken found himself on the floor, staring up at the bandaged young hunter.

Seto stormed over to the door and took hold of the knob, clenching his fingers tightly about the worn metal. "If you wake him now," Ryou said, regaining his breath, "if you fight him in the daylight, he'll die."

Seto clenched his teeth. "Good."

"No," Arken replied, rising at last from his unceremonious place on the ground. "Not good. He dies, it's over. No more punishment, no more pain, no more guilt over what he did to her." Seto flinched slightly and Arken came up behind him, placing a hand on his shoulder. "Listen, wouldn't it be better if he has to live with what he did? If he had to wake up every night and remember that he hurt the one person that holds all the freaks in this place together?"

Seto remembered how his father hadn't come back like he said, how he had never come back. He and Mokuba had buried their mother in the back yard—even though they had tried to clean her up there was still blood in her hair—and how much Seto had hated his father at that moment. His father had left; he would never be forced to step through the room where he killed his own wife, to walk through the halls she had laughed in, to sit on the couch she had lounged on, to lay on the bed where she had lain. He would never be reminded of his guilt, never feel the subtle ache in his chest that would remind him, time and again, that it was his fault she was gone.

If he killed the Vampire that had hurt that young woman, then he would be letting him off easy—easier than his father had been let off. Seto could not allow that to happen.

"Wouldn't it be better if he had to live with that guilt, rather than die and be freed from it?" Arken added quietly.

Seto blinked slowly and released his hold on the doorknob. The odd, white-haired young man was right. Honda Hiroto would not die for what he had done, he would live. And, because he was a Vampire, he would live forever. The young hunter smirked.

Pain flared throughout his entire body, his vision went dark and he fell forward against the door. The last thing he heard was Arken crying out, and the last thing he felt were the young man's arms wrapping around him, holding him upright as he drifted off into the void.

* * *

The hunter released the doorknob, swayed slightly in place, and then collapsed. Arken cried out and surged forward to catch him grunting under the taller young man's weight. The kid was skinny, but apparently he wasn't underweight—the young Kaiba was _heavy_. "God, this guy's amazing!" Arken chuckled as Ryou came up and slung one of Seto's arms over his shoulders, helping his blue-eyed companion to return the young man to his bed.

"How so?" the apparently-young doctor inquired.

"First off, he threw us both off," Arken listed, "secondly, he actually managed to get onto his feet on his own, and stay there; third, he's a hunter and so obviously hates Vampires, but was about to go out there and risk his own neck to avenge one." He let out a short cackle as they laid the hunter down. "Absolutely amazing."

* * *

Rebecca walked out of the bloodbank with a smile on her face and a bottle in each hand, humming softly to herself. That had turned out exceptionally well, in her opinion. That woman would never bother anyone from the Jounouchi Estate with her useless questions again, the petite blond was sure of that.

She was so happy to have actually accomplished something that she didn't notice the black motorcycle coming up the street until it was practically right beside her—then her smile broadened and she waved one burdened hand. "Rafael!" she hollered. The other people on the street glanced between the girl and the rider in the black helmet, confused. A couple of them clearly recognized the regalia of those who worked with Vampires, for a select few shot only a single glance and then hurried away.

The motorcycle came to a halt and the rider reached up to pull off his helmet, revealing his short gold hair. He grinned down at the little girl with all the warmth of a relative or extremely close friend, cocking his head to one side. "Rebecca!" he cheered in English. "What are you doing out so early?"

He held up a shiny black bottle. "I'm running an errand for Ryou," she replied in the same language. Rafael looked at the bottle and his brow furrowed. He wasn't a Vampire, that much was obvious by his traveling in the daylight, but he knew blood. He gave the girl a darkly curious glance and she let out a sigh, shaking her head. "Shizuka-_dono_ was hurt last night, badly," she said, layering the English language with Japanese honorifics. "Ryou sent me to get this so she'll heal quicker."

"Get on, I'll drive you home," he said, gesturing behind him. When Rebecca handed him the bottles he began speaking on-topic once more. "The Missy hates human blood," he said. He knew the preferences of every Vampire in Domino, being the proprietor of the only blood bar in the city, and Shizuka's was rather strange as far as creatures of the night went. "She won't drink it."

Rebecca shrugged. "If she won't drink it," she said, situating herself properly on the back seat and pulling on the extra helmet Rafael kept there just for her, "then Ryou'll just give her an I.V. and pump it into her like a human getting and transfusion."

The other blond human nodded, pulling on his helmet and tucking the bottles into the compartments placed on either side of the bike, just in front of his knees. He, being one of two workers in his bar, one of which was usually out of the country delivering messages, often found himself making deliveries, and had designed these compartments specifically to carry bottles such as the ones Rebecca had been carrying. He started up the bike again and Rebecca wrapped her arms around his waist, holding tightly.

"Hey, on another subject," he called back as they started off, doing a wonderfully illegal U-turn in the road just in front of a passing car, "did the Missy get a letter from Cecilia?"

Rebecca nodded, knowing he would feel the motion. "Mazaki-_san _delivered it and she's staying at the estate for a little while, just until Shizuka-_dono_ recovers."

"Any clue what it said?"

"No," Rebecca replied. "But I'll bet they're going to hold a meeting sometime soon. The Vampire Lord ruling over Japan is about a millimeter from the line, and everyone knows he won't hesitate to cross it if he needs to."

Rafael thought for a moment. "What about Atem's boy? Has the secret weapon finished his training yet? He's only been at it for six _years_ now." Atem knew he had a gift in his young human charge, and that there was nothing that would be able to stand against the youth once his training was complete, but it was taking too long. Japan had been under the rule of a maniac for long enough—with this recent development of him finally taking a contracted servant, things were certain to accelerate. If the boy wasn't ready soon…

Rebecca sighed. "He's only a year older than I am, Rafael," she murmured into the back of his jacket. "He's not ready to kill anybody yet."

The man sighed. "Too bad he's the only one who can," Rafael muttered as they sped down the street, the wind tearing his words away before his blue-eyed passenger could hear them.

* * *

"Young Master! Young Master!" The boy called, walking through the courtyard with a look of concern rooted firmly on his face, deep magenta eyes dark with worry. He sighed as he looked around the area again, looking from the sand garden to the grass to the flowers, all with no sign of the boy. Raking a hand through his golden-streaked hair, the young boy let out an exasperated sigh—Atem would have both their heads if the kid wasn't found soon.

How it was that someone so conspicuous as Atem's young charge could go unnoticed through the palace was a mystery to all, but a well-known one. Not a day went by that the boy didn't slip away from at least one of his lessons. Today he had skipped them all.

The boy sent out to look for him, a Japanese youth named Yugi, cupped a small hand to his mouth once more. "Young Master, your sparring match with Rashid is coming up soon!"

"Tell him to spar with himself," came a disdainful voice from a distance away.

Yugi blinked, quirking an eyebrow, and headed in that direction. Stepping from the grass into the flower garden, Yugi found a young black-haired boy dressed in varying shades of grey spread out flat in the flowerbed. It was a perfect hiding place—Isis claimed that her flowers were tall enough to hide a grown man laying down, and apparently she wasn't far from the truth.

The boy was nowhere near grown, however. He couldn't have been any older than fifteen, if even that, with a face that still spoke of youth and a stance that shouted teenage rebellion. His eyes, staring straight up into the tapestry of perfect blue with white clouds breathed carefully into place by one or another of the local gods, were a shade of azure so deep it would have made the night sky jealous. His skin was a healthy tan, his arms—bare, for the white shirt he currently wore had no sleeves—were well-built but not thick, and the line of his jaw spoke of a strong adult in the making. There was a shadow in his brilliant eyes, however, that spoke of deep-set anger and sorrow as well, and those emotions did not go unnoticed to his mostly-black-haired companion.

"Are you all right?" Yugi asked. The boy did not reply. "Mokuba, this is Yugi talking, not Atem or Rashid or Isis. What's the matter?"

"Why do you care?" the boy, Mokuba, inquired, rolling onto his side and crushing several of Isis' beloved flowers. Yugi winced, but Mokuba seemed to care abaout as much as he thought his companion did.

The little boy clad all in white, with a golden necklace and bracers to match, looking perfectly at-home against the Egyptian backdrop that spread out behind him, knelt down beside his friend. "Mokuba-_kun_," he said in Japanese—old Japanese, a dialect Mokuba had only ever heard spoken in documentaries about the Bakamatsu and other pre-Meiji eras—in the hopes of winning the boy's confidences a little more. "What is the matter?"

"Do you know what today is?" Mokuba inquired.

Yugi blinked, confused. "Thursday?" 

"Today is June eighteenth," the black-haired boy said easily, sitting up. He pulled a length of his long mane over his shoulder and went about picking the leaves and flower petals from it. "Six years ago today, Yugi—that means it's my anniversary." He grinned darkly. "I wonder if Atem bought me a present."

Yugi's brow creased. "It was for your own good, Mokuba. If you had stayed with your family without knowing the kind of power you hold—"

Mokuba shot to his feet and stomped away, crunching several more flowers. "I'll be with Malik if you need me," he called over his shoulder. "Tell Rashid our fight is off until tomorrow."

Yugi watched the boy go with a sigh, lowering his magenta eyes. "You'll understand someday, Mokuba. Someday the prophecies will come true and you _will_ understand. I just hope it's soon…"

* * *

**

* * *

Author's Note: Not a lot happened in this chapter, sorry. It's more like a pivot, I guess. I got to show a bit of the relationship between Rafael and Rebecca, and mention the relationship between her and Ryuuji, too. Also, now you have a hint about what's going on with Mokuba! Was it vague enough to keep you coming back? I hope so.**

**Special Thanks** to everyone who left those wonderful reviews! It's nice to know that there are people out there who won't tell me I'm immature for being in love with Yu-Gi-Oh—I've been getting this a lot from my friends at work. It's a pleasant change to know that there are people out there like me.

Also, **Uber-Special Thanks** to my favorite YGO fanfic author, _PinkStarz_. She probably has no clue who I am, but she's the one who inspired me to start writing down the weird idea ricocheting through my head. If you're a fan of SetoxShizuka, read her stuff. She's the queen of the Silentshipping world.

**Next Chapter:**

A fight, pancakes, waffles, three maids, a solarium, a bedroom, leather boots, and (hopefully, if the characters do what I want them to)—drumroll—Noa Kaiba!

If that's not enough to make you come back I don't know what is!


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